E 

,C3 .. 



THE 



SOUTHERN CONFEDERACY 



AND 



THE AFRICAN SLAVE TRADE. 



THE CORRESPONDENCE 



BETWEEN 



PROFESSOR CAIRNES, A.M., AND GEORGE M'HEKRY, ESQ. 

[reprinted from the "daily news."] 



WITH AN INTRODUCTION AND NOTES, 
BY 

THE REV. GEORGE B. WHEELER, A.M. 



" This is a great subject ; it affects the future stage of civilization ; it affects 
the well-being of the black race, whom it was the crime of our ancestors to intro- 
duce to America — on behalf of whose welfare we have been ready to make great 
efforts, and to sacrifice much ; but we will not sacrifice any of our views to mere 
pretence." — Earl Russell, at Blairgowrie, 



DUBLIN: 
M C GLASHA^ X & GILL, 50, UPPEK SACKVILLE-STKEET. 

1863. 

Price Sixpence. 



DUBLIN : 

^prtiitetr at tfje <!Hntt>ersit£> ^ress, 

BY M. H. GILL. 



• C3 






NOTICE. 



Some friends to the cause of the Confederate States, resi- 
dent in Ireland, desired that the letters of George M 'Henry, 
Esq., in reply to Professor Cairnes, originally published 
in the "Daily News," should be reprinted. These letters 
contain valuable information respecting the internal eco- 
nomy of the South. Once it was determined to republish 
the defence, it became necessary, for the sake of clearness 
and in the spirit of fair play, to publish the attack. In 
x -ofessor Cairnes the Northerns have an able and energetic 
chpmpion, such a one as they have not produced from 
among themselves. The friends of the South are satisfied 
to rest their case, so far as the subject of the correspon- 
dence is concerned, on the defence made by Mr. M 'Henry. 

In preparing the correspondence for the press, I have 
thrown together some results, sufficiently remarkable, of 
my own -reading. I regret that in the letters there occur 
one or two phrases which, had circumstances permitted, 
I would gladly have erased. The subject is altogether 
too grave and too important to admit of sharpness or 
repartee. I have addressed myself, I hope in a proper 
spirit, to only four questions ; for the portico should not 
be of greater extent than the building itself. These ques- 
tions are — 

1st. Do the statistics of the last American census fairly 



( iv ) 

warrant the inference that an internal slave trade exists 
between Virginia and the Gulf States ? 

2nd. Is the slavery question reasonably stated to have 
been the cause of disruption ? 

3rd. Is emancipation suddenly effected, and by force of 
arms, expedient or possible ? and, 

4th. Is it true that the war was undertaken by President 
Lincoln and the Northerns for the limitation or abolition 
of slavery ? 

I have addressed myself to these questions in particular, 
because they bear upon the assertions recently made in 
public by an advocate of the North, the Eev. Henry Ward 
Beecher, and, if I do nothing else in this brief paper, 
Kv\iu) Kayco tov tt'iOov, d>c f^V fxovog apytiv doicoir)v sv to- 
govtolq kpyaZofiivoig. 

G. B. W. 

29, Trinity College, Dublin, 
Nov. 15th, 1863. 



INTRODUCTION. 



So averse to careful investigation are mankind in general, that if 
an interested cry be repeated with moderate persistence, but 
immoderate vehemence, it will probably be assented to by 
the multitude. We do not say it will be believed — for belief re- 
quires thought — but it will be acted upon and treated as true, 
and its consequences may be as important as if action were the 
result of deliberate and anxious examination. In this age the 
minds of men spring rapidly to conclusions, and that man is 
thanked whose dogmatism relieves others from the labour of inves- 
tigation. This is especially the case if on the surface there are 
some appearances which seem to confirm the views persistently 
urged by interested advocates. The grand desideratum of hostile 
parties is a good cry; not that the cry may be in itself good, that 
is, founded on truth, but that it may be plausible, and likely to 
recommend those who use it, or to cast opprobrium upon their 
opponents. In this sense a good cry has been found by the 
Northern States of America, and has been taken up and repeated 
by many, through different motives, As the spirit of the British 
people is determinedly opposed, not merely to actual slavery, but 
to every system assuming its appearance, and as slavery exists 
as a fact in the Southern States of America, it was easy to as- 
sert that the Southerns took up arms solely for the extension of 
slavery. We are urgently required to believe that all who 
sympathize with a gallant people, struggling for independence, 
are " slavers," or champions in defence of " slavery," and that 

b 



( vi ) 

all who wrestle for Northern . supremacy are "liberators of 
their species, and benefactors to mankind." Secession has been 
represented as the disruption and departure of " slave drivers 1 ' 
from generous, disinterested, moderate, unaggressive, liberating 
philanthropists. The Northerns are paraded before Europe as 
men who have heroically resolved to sacrifice their all in order to 
give freedom to negroes, with whom they would have nothing 
in common, and whom some Northern States would not admit 
within their own frontier.* The cry of " freedom for the slave" 
has been so persistently repeated, that at last some who used it 
actually believe it to be genuine. Once this point was reached 
the next step was easy; from journals, pamphlets, and lecture 
rooms it is proclaimed that the war was undertaken by the 
Southerns, not to free themselves from a most oppressive system of 
protection, — not against illegal interference with the rights of in- 
dependent states, not against a tyrannical usurpation of authority 
or against a persistent system of irritating calumny, but for the 
maintenance and extension of slavery. The South, we are 
solemnly told, has exhausted its lands, although these lands pro- 
duced 5,000,000 bales of cotton in I860, in addition to all their 
other products. To replace the " worn-out" soil of the Southf 

* Among the Northern Americans themselves, to this moment, there is a 
great diversity of professed opinion respecting the cause of the war. One party, 
agreeing v/ith the Ultra- Abolitionists in England, assert that the sole issue raised 
by the last presidential election was the extension or exclusion of slavery from 
the " Territories ;" another, that it arose from an anxiety to destroy the slave 
power within the Southern States themselves ; a third, to which Mr. Motley belongs, 
that the real object is to maintain inviolate the true principles of the constitution 
of 1789, and the sovereignty of the abstract Union over State rights ; and a fourth, 
that the ambition of the Northerns to establish a military despotism, extending 
from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and the desire to carry out in practice the 
Monroe theory, was the cause. A fifth party assign it to the anxiety of the New 
Englanders to establish a protected manufacturing power, as opposed to the free 
trade tendencies of the South. Mr. Lincoln, to the last moment, asserted that 
there was really nothing at all to fight about. 

f It is a great mistake to suppose that the production of cotton exhausts the 
soil — a still greater mistake to suppose that cotton can be best cultivated in the 



( vii ) 

Mexico, Central America, South America, Cuba, and the West 
India Islands were to be seized ; the '* intentions" of Southern 
statesmen were said to tend to the establishment of a gigantic 
Slave Power, whose black shadow was to darken the hopes of the 
world, and specially to chill the humane efforts of benevolent 
New Englanders. Whence the slaves were to be acquired who 
were to render all these countries productive, and to win food 
from the earth while their masters entered on their career of 
universal conquest, is not stated. The Southern States, long 
before their separation from England, had abolished the foreign 
slave trade ; when they became independent of Britain, they 
made their laws against the trade more stringent ; and the Con- 
federacy, before it breathed freely from its birth throes, in the 
first charter of its new-born liberty, prohibited the African slave 
trade for all time to come. Yet, in defiance of facts, and in out- 
rage of common sense, the cry is repeated until it becomes 
deafening, " The North fights to liberate the slave — the South 
secedes to extend the limits of slavery."* 4 

Let us examine calmly and dispassionately four questions re- 
cently revived, connected with this mass of assertion, and ascer- 
tain on what grounds they rest. 

virgin soil of the Territories. Cotton, sugar, and rice do not, as a fact, exhaust 
the productive powers of the earth. After these crops the soil requires far less 
manure than after any other ; these staples are almost self-sustaining. Tobacco 
does wear out the soil ; but then tobacco is only cultivated in the Border States, 
and can be managed by white labour, but in more southern climates the toil is 
too severe for the European race. 

* Virginia was the first State to abolish the African slave trade. In 1776, 
she recited in the preface to her constitution a complaint that the King of Eng- 
land, by an inhuman use of his negative, had refused the Virginians permission 
to exclude African slaves by law. In 1698 South Carolina placed restrictions 
on the Slave trade, and in 1764 placed a duty of £100 on each slave imported; 
in 1787, when independent, she enacted that no negro or other slave shall be 
imported from Africa, ox from any other State unless accompanied by his master. 
Georgia prohibited the slave trade in 1798. Alabama never permitted the 
African slave trade to be carried on. The other Southern States adopted, at an 
early period, laws restricting the slave trade, similar to those of North Carolina 
or Virginia. 

b 2 



( viii ) 
I. 

DO THE STATISTICS OF THE LAST AMERICAN CENSUS FAIRLY WAR- 
RANT THE INFERENCE THAT AN INTERNAL SLAVE TRADE EXISTS 
BETWEEN VIRGINIA AND THE GULF STATES ? 

Two arguments are advanced by the assailants of the South, 
to prove that an internal slave trade exists between Virginia and 
the Gulf States. It is argued by Mr. Senior, that, instead of 
increasing at the rate of 28 per cent., in the decade between 
1850 and 1860, the slaves in Virginia increased at the rate of 
only 5J per cent. From this fact it is inferred " that Virginia 
had exported her human crop to Texas, Alabama, and Florida." 
The suppressed premiss from which this conclusion is drawn is 
this: — "Every State whose slaves do not increase in equal propor- 
tion to those of other States exports her slaves." Stated thus, 
the fallacy is at once apparent. Every one sees that the climate 
of one State, such as Virginia, may be less calculated to insure 
the increase of the negro population than that of a more tropical 
region, such as Florida, Alabama, and Texas. Negroes do not 
increase in Maryland, on the borders of Pennsylvania, or in the 
North in general, as they do in the South : are we to infer that 
Maryland and Pennsylvania sell their negroes to the South ? A 
remarkable passage in the despatch of the Hon. Mr. Stuart to 
the British Foreign Secretary throws some light on this point: 
he says (p. 287, Report, 1863):— 

" Of the entire population of the United States, in I860, 
26,975,575 are white, and the remaining 4,441,765 are coloured. 
Of the latter, 3,953,760 are slaves, leaving 488,005 free coloured 
persons. The increase of these last, although including liberated 
and escaped slaves, had, during the previous thirty years, been 
proportionally much less than that of the slaves. This is partly at- 
tributed to an excessive mortality amongst free coloured persons 
in the large "Northern cities."* 

* The city registrar of Boston observes (1862) : — " The number of coloured 
births in this city for the five years ending in 1859 was one less than the num- 
ber of marriages, and the deaths exceeded the births in the proportion of nearly 
two to one. In Providence, Rhode Island, in 1860, the deaths are one out of 



( i* ) 

If the mortality of free negroes be so great in the cities of the 
North as to influence materially the return of the census for all 
America, is it unreasonable to suppose that the mortality is also 
more considerable in Virginia, separated only by a river from 
Maryland, than in a greater degree of Southern latitude? 

A curious phenomenon presents itself to one who inquires into 
the statistics respecting free and slave negroes. Let us take, for 
example, the returns for the British West India Islands ; here we 
find the negroes, under what would be called most favourable 
circumstances, not increasing in the proper ratio, and in some 
cases very considerably diminishing in proportion. The last census 
places the population of Trinidad ; in 1860, at 84,438, being an 
apparent increase of 14,829 over the population in 1850; but the 
Governor is compelled to state, " that putting aside the addition 
made to the population by the importation of Coolies from India, 
but a small margin is left for natural increase, and for that occa- 
sioned by the influx of voluntary immigrants from the neighbour- 
ing colonies, which is very considerable." The population of 
Grenada, in 1861, was 31,900, while it was 32,418 in 1851. In 
Tobago the enumeration of 1851 gave the population at 14,378 
souls ; at the very lowest estimate, namely 22 per cent., the in- 
crease in 1861 ought to have been about 3200; but it is only 
1032. The Governor of St. Vincent states, " that there has been 
little or no increase in population" in the ten years. In St. 
Lucia the population is 26,705 souls, an increase of 1536, while 
the increase ought to have been 5500; the Governor attributes 
the smallness of increase to cholera, and " bites of venomous 
serpents, which kill 30 people yearly!" In Antigua the popula- 
tion, in 1861, was 35,408, and in 3 years the increase was less 

every twenty-four of the coloured race : in Philadelphia, during the last six 
months of the census year, there were 184 births, and 306 deaths, among the ne- 
groes. In the State registries of Ehode Island and Connecticut, where the dis- 
tinction of colour has been specified, the yearly deaths of the blacks and mu- 
latoes have generally, though not uniformly, exceeded the yearly births, — a high 
rate of mortality, chiefly ascribed to consumption, and other diseases of the respi- 
ratory system. The free coloured population shows an actual decrease in the ten 
years, 1850 to 1860, in Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, New York, and 
Oregon, and their increase in the other free States was very trifling." 



( X ) 

than 2 per cent. ; the Governor remarks, — " This is contrary to 
what might be expected in a favourable climate, where the wants 
of life are comparatively few, and where there has been, happily, 
no epidemic disease." 

In Montserrat the increase for the ten years is about 2J per 
cent, on the entire population, or about the tenth of the increase 
of negroes in all the continent of America. A partisan hostile 
to England might bring these facts forward to prove that the 
negroes in the British islands were clandestinely sold. We know 
that the low rate of increase can be, and has been, satisfactorily 
accounted for; but is it honest to refuse to the South credit for 
her explanation of the low increase in Virginia? On what fair 
principle between man and man must we assert that the South 
is false in attributing the apparently diminished rate of increase 
to the fact that there has been a considerable emigration of 
owners, with their slaves, into the Southern States from Virginia, 
while we admit that the Governor of St. Lucia is right in attri- 
buting the low rate of increase in his population partly to the 
bite of venomous serpents? 

The second argument brought forward by the opponents of the 
South is still more plausible, — stating that the natural increase 
of the negro, as shown by the census returns, is on a par with that 
of the whites up to fifteen years of age, and that then it suddenly 
declines, they assert that the reason is "because the slaves, on 
reaching fifteen years of age, are sold to the South, and conse- 
quently disappear from the census returns." What will these 
reasoners say when we produce a case strikingly similar from a 
British colony? The Governor of Barbadoes, while congratu- 
lating the Duke of Newcastle on the satisfactory results of the 
census in his department, says: — " Your Grace will perceive that 
nearly one half of the population of 152,727, in 1861, consists of 
persons under fifteen years of age!" That is, there are 70,070 
children under fifteen ; and the total increase in this satisfactory 
return is but 12 J per cent, for the ten years, although there is a 
population of 16,594 whites in the island. Is there any mani- 
pulator of statistics who will venture to say that in Barbadoes 
the moment a black has reached fifteen years of age he is sold? 



( xi ) 

II. 

IS THE SLAVERY QUESTION REASONABLY STATED TO HAVE BEEN THE 
CAUSE OF THE DISRUPTION? 

In considering the possible causes of the present Secession, 
the just historian would feel it to be his duty to ascertain whe- 
ther there had been a previous Secession, and whether the causes 
which originated that prior Secession remained in full force at the 
period of the succeeding Secession. If he found that a Secession 
had previously taken place because a customs tariff most injurious 
and unjust towards the South had been instituted, and that a tariff 
more injurious was the law at the period of the second Secession, 
while one still more oppressive was impending, he would believe 
that this trebly hostile tariff, among other causes at least, tended 
to originate the second Secession. We find, then, that on the revi- 
sion of the United States' tariff in 1832, heavy import duties were 
imposed upon all manufactured articles consumed by the South. 
There was a struggle between the manufacturing interests of the 
North and the agricultural interests of the South, in which the 
former obtained the victory. We know something of a similar 
struggle in this country, and of the exasperation which it created. 
When mercenary motives are involved, it is almost vain to reason 
in favour of justice and fairness; and the Southerns of South Ca- 
rolina summoned a convention, and solemnly declared the tariff 
null and void, on the ground that " Congress had exceeded its 
just powers under the constitution, which confers on it no autho- 
rity to afford such protection ; and had violated the true meaning 
and intent of the constitution, which provides for equality in 
imposing the burdens of taxation on the several States." Here 
was a bold assertion of State right against Federal authority; 
and so far had secession proceeded, that South Carolina armed 
her militia, and prepared for a vigorous defence : then, as recently, 
the foremost in defence, she relied upon the adhesion of other 
allies whose interests were similar to her own. The perils of 
secession, though not the right to secede, were obviated by the 
policy of President Jackson and Mr. Clay. The latter prepared 
a measure providing for a considerable reduction of the duties 



( m ) 

upon manufactures, and hurried it through the houses. In 1842, 
the United States' treasury was exhausted, and Mr. Clay's tariff 
underwent revision. The changes made were all against the agri- 
cultural interests of the South, and in favour of the manufactur- 
ing interests of the North. Moreover, the election of Mr. Lincoln, 
among other questions, settled this — that a tariff of the most hos- 
tile character to the South would assuredly be passed. This has 
become the law, under the name of the Morrill tariff; and, respect- 
ing it, it need only be said that it imposes a duty of 50 per cent, 
upon the value of all imported manufactures, — in other words, 
the Southerns were required to pay to the manufacturers of the 
North a bonus, or protective duty, of 50 per cent. If a hostile 
tariff caused Secession in 1832, Secession was natural under a still 
more hostile tariff in 1861. In common candour, the recent Se- 
cession should not be solely attributed to the question of slavery. 

Connected with this subject, there are some returns possessing 
very great significance. 

The total Exports of the Northern States, in 1859, were of the 
value of 169,212,287 dollars, or about £36,242,457.* 



* In speaking of the exports of the Northern States, we must remember that 
a very large proportion of these exports consisted of articles which were the pro- 
duce of the South. To show the extent of this internal trade, ending in an 
export trade, we need only take a single Northern port and its internal traffic 
In the Reports of Her Majesty's Consuls, June 30th, 1863, p. 518, Ave find the 
following notice, written by the British consul at Boston : — 

" Southern Produce. — The receipts of some articles of Southern produce show 
a large falling off during the year, as follows : — 



Articles. 



Cotton, Bales, 

Rice, Casks, 

Rosin, Barrels, 

Turpentine, „ 

Spirits of Turpentine, . . . Gallons, 

Pitch, , Barrels, 

Tar, „ 



1861. 


1860. 


Decrease. 


191,777 


381,999 


190,189 


3,601 


9,570 


5,969 


21,136 


71,956 


50,820 


842 


5,253 


4,411 


8,250 


28,910 


20,661 


2,353 


3,165 


812 


18,906 


19,101 


195 



" The prices of these articles have advanced to unusually high figures. The 
value of cotton has increased full 100 dollars a bale." 



( xiii ) 

The total Imports reached 305,813,378 dols., or £61,162,675, 
i. e. an excess of £24,920,218. We shall now see how that vast 
excess was disposed of. 

The Exports of the Confederate States were of the value of 
178,340,776 dols., or about £35,668,155; while the Imports 
reached only 23,240,831 dols., or £4,648,160 — or an excess of 
exports over imports of £31, 019, 995.* 

The interpretation of these figures is this : — The Southerns 
were compelled to buy from the Northern manufacturers the 
worth of £31,000,000 in Northern goods ; on which sum theypaid 
a protective duty of 35 per cent. — in other words, the Southerns 



* The full figures are as follows : — 

Value, est Dollars, of the Exports and Imports of each State, 

during Year ending June 30, 1859. 

Federal States. 







Exports. 






States and Territo- 
ries. 








Imports. 










American 


Foreign 


Total. 






Produce. 


Produce. 




California,. . . 


12,405,184 


3,514,004 


15,919,188 


11,163,558 


Connecticut, . . 


1,130,069 


14,242 


1,144,311 


491,067 


Delaware,. . . 


49,511 




49,511 


529 


Illinois,. . . . 


1,269,385 




1,269,385 


93,588 


Indiana, 51 . . . 






. . . 




Iowa, a . . . . 










Maine, . . . . 


2,'774,408 


466,421 


3,240,839 


2*157,086 


Massachusetts, . 


16,036,603 


2,122,215 


18,158,818 


43,184,500 


Michigan, . . . 


3,624,624 


. . . 


3,624,624 


1,067,339 


Minnesota, 51 . . 






. . . 




New Hampshire, 


9,605 


188 


9,793 


23,227 


New Jersey, . . 


21,938 




21,938 


5,046 


New York, . . 


104,726,546 


12,813,279 


117,539,825 


229,181,349 


Ohio, 


263,011 


. . . 


263,011 


267,846 


Oregon,, . . . 


5,000 




5,000 


2,097 


Pennsylvania, . 


5,278,635 


96,591 


5,375,226 


14,520,331 


Khode Island, . 


292,090 


18,723 


310,813 


1,819,068 


Vermont, . . . 


295,659 


840,906 


1,136,565 


1,802,668 


Wisconsin, . . 


699,088 




699,088 


28,946 


Washington ) 
Territory, } 

Total, . . 


444,352 




444,352 


5,133 


149,325,718 


19,886,569 


169,212,287 


305,813,378 



a No returns are furnished from these States. 



( xi v ) 



paid a bonus of £ 1 1,000,000 annually to Northern manufacturers, 
and paid it out of the proceeds of cotton and tobacco exported to 
England and other countries. 

These figures also suggest that an export trade to the South, 
of the value of 3 1 millions, is open to the Power which first re- 
cognises the Southern Confederacy. If France is to be that 
power, then France undertakes a manifest risk, and is entitled to 
be rewarded by a more favourable scale of duties than that im- 
posed on the products of other nations. When Louisiana was 
sold to the United States by the Great Napoleon, that potentate 
required and obtained a monopoly of free trade for his exports 
for 12 years; the present Emperor of the French is fond of re- 
suscitating the idees Napoliennes ; and who could justly murmur 
if, in gratitude for his recognition and possibly for his aid, the 
Southerns give to France free trade in cotton? It should be re- 
membered that free trade is at present a principle with the South. 

In the monetary article of the Times of Wednesday, Septem- 
ber 23, there occurs this sentence: — 

" Come what may, throughout the future all our great trading 
relations with. America must, as heretofore, be with the North. " 

Is this so evident? Is it likely, or even reasonable? Why 

Confederated States. 



States and. Terri- 


Exports. 


Imports. 


tories. 


American 
Produce. 


Foreign 
Produce. 


Total, 


Alabama, . 
Arkansas, a 
Florida, . . 
Georgia, . 
Louisiana,. 
Mississippi, a 
North Carolii 
South Carolii 
Tennessee, 1 


la, 
la, 


28,933,662 

3,128,650 

15,562,154 

100,890,689 

435,409 

17,972,580 

3,855,879 
6,715,133 


63,712 
775,840 

30 
7,029 


28,933,662 

3,192,362 

15,562?154 

101,666,538 

435,409 
17,972,580 

3,855,909 
6,722,162 


788,164 

286,971 

624,645 

18,349,516 

168,645 
1,438,535 

468,162 
1,116,193 


Virginia, . . . 


Total, . 




177,494,156 


846,620 


178,340,776 


23,240,831 



a No returns are furnished from these States. 



( xv ) 

should British merchants prefer and continue to trade only 
through the North with its all but prohibitive tariff, rather than 
with the South direct, under free trade? Monetary interests, 
in public profession at least, must not influence England to re- 
cognise the South. But if the South be recognised — if Jefferson 
Davis repeats the ultimate success of Washington, and wins inde- 
pendence for his country — why should we prefer to send our goods 
to the North, and pay a duty of 50 per cent., rather than send them 
to the South, paying only a nominal duty ? Is there any reason 
for this in the nature of things? If England is so self-denying 
as to reject all calculations of this kind, no one has predicated 
the same respecting France ; and the Genius who rules that coun- 
try will estimate fully the vast influence the possession of a great 
and expansive export trade to the South and a monopoly of the 
Southern cotton trade would give his dominions. 

III. 

IS EMANCIPATION SUDDENLY EFFECTED, AND BY FORCE OF ARMS, 
EXPEDIENT OR POSSIBLE ? 

Conceding, for the purposes of argument, that the Northern 
States were not animated by a spirit of conquest, and that, were it 
possible for them to conquer the South, they would not esta- 
blish a more grievous Slavery under the name of free labour than 
the negroes had ever endured, let us glance at the nature of an 
emancipation to be professedly effected suddenly, by force of 
arms, and as a necessity of war. Neither as regards its extent 
nor its character should such an emancipation be compared with 
the emancipation of the slaves in the British West Indian Islands. 
Into these islands, from the commencement of the British slave 
trade, had been imported the vast number of 1,700,000 slaves. 
Under British owners and British law, so far from the negroes 
having increased in number, they diminished in a most extraor- 
dinary degree. When the English Emancipation Act was passed, 
there were but 660,000 Negroes in the British dominions. To 
liberate 660,000 Slaves is a very different thing from liberating 
upwards of 4,000,000. The value of the slaves in the British 
possessions was estimated at £20,000,000; the value of the 



( x vi ) 

slaves in the South is generally set down at £500,000,000. 
At a very early period of the war (April, 1861), when it was sup- 
posed that one object of the Federal government was to liberate 
the slaves, Dr. George Shaw, LL.D., a Fellow of Trinity Col- 
lege, Dublin, estimated their value at £400,000,000, and he pro- 
posed that a capital sum to that amount should be raised by 
loan, the interest payable on which sum would constitute a na- 
tional debt, easy to be borne by so great and so progressive a 
nation, and probably less than the annual cost of the military 
establishments, and the double cordon of custom houses, which 
would be required in case of separation. Dr. Shaw recognised the 
rights of property ; and, however vast the sum then appeared to be, 
events have proved that to buy up the slaves from the South would 
have been the more economical course by far ; the Federal expendi- 
ture alone having already reached a total greater than that re- 
quired, on Dr. Shaw's estimate, for the purchase of the liberty 
of the Slaves. But, in addition to this "market value" of the 
slaves themselves, the deterioration of agricultural property in 
the South is to be considered, and Mr. Spence's estimate of 
£200,000,000 appears to be a moderate total to allow for that. 
We thus have property valued, by the lowest estimate, at 
£600,000,000, to be, on our supposition, taken from the South. 
We do not believe that England, with all her wealth, generosity, 
and philanthropy, would suddenly have manumitted her slaves, if 
so enormous a loss as this had been entailed. If we are to form any 
opinion respecting the intentions of the Northern government 
from what they have already done, or from their publications, 
we infer that their purpose is to confiscate all property in 
Southern land and in Southern slaves; that is, they will appro- 
priate to themselves £600,000,000 worth of property. They will 
have a monopoly of cotton wherewith to supply their own mills, 
and supplant England in that most important article of manu- 
facture. The soldiers of the North or the friends of the authori- 
ties are to be located in the South as military colonists, and to 
exact what they are pleased to call "free labour" from the 
liberated contrabands. This has already been commenced at Port 
Royal, in a portion of Louisiana, and of South Carolina. A mere 



( xvii ) 

glance at such a scheme is sufficient to show not only the vast 
difference in extent, but in character, which exists between 
England's emancipation of her slaves and that professedly un- 
dertaken by the Federals. 

The unsatisfactory state to which our West Indian Islands 
have been reduced, the indolence and apathy of the negroes, the 
despair which seems to be the end of all great attempts to civi- 
lize and elevate them by sudden and spasmodic efforts, ought at 
least to remind men of Bishop Butler's aphorism, that " one of 
the worst of evils is unrestricted benevolence."* 

A reasonable man can scarcely contemplate without alarm the 
sudden liberation of upwards of 4,000,000 of slaves, whom the 
Northerns represent as "wholly untaught" and therefore unpre- 
pared for freedom, "burning under a sense of wrong," "writhing 
under tyranny," and " with clenched teeth and well-poised 
bayonet," to use Mr. Lincoln's words, turning upon their masters. 

* " It is a disagreeable conclusion at which to arrive, but I fear it must be ad- 
mitted that the mass of the population have achieved no elevation of late years 
in moral or social condition. It is fruitless to waste regrets on past omissions 
which cannot now be supplied ; and doubtless it was almost impossible, on insti- 
tuting so great a change as that from slavery to freedom, to provide for all the 
contingencies which might arise from so unaccustomed a social condition being 
suddenly conferred upon the mass of an unprepared people. No attempt at a 
probationary state would probably have been successful at the moment, and cer- 
tainly those colonies where the intermediate ' apprenticeship' was adopted in no 
respect seem to have benefited more than if — as in the instance of one colony at 
least — the transition from slavery to perfect freedom had been instantaneous and 
immediate. 

" Yet it is impossible to avoid a feeling of sorrow that, on removing the arbi- 
trary government of a state of slavery, it was not endeavoured by some means 
artificially to apply the stimulus to industry, and effort after social progress, which 
in other communities has been the gradual growth of advancing civilization. If 
from the first the negro population had been made to comprehend that the ac- 
quisition of freedom involved responsibilities which they would be required to 
discharge, the condition of most of these islands would now be very different from 
what it is. If they then had been told that, becoming freemen, they no longer 
possessed any claim to have their persons and their property secured, their chil- 
dren educated, their sick and destitute provided for, at the expense of others, and 
that for these and like purposes they must make direct contribution in the shape 
of specific taxes in aid of public burdens, both would their moral and social states 



( xviii ) 

Is it to be hoped that freedom granted as an act of retaliation, or 
as a punishment for alleged treason, would elevate the character 
of the negro, or increase his chances of regeneration? " I tremble," 
said Jefferson, " for my country, if we leave the solution to the 
current of events. Human nature recoils from the prospect be- 
fore us. The extermination and expulsion of the Moors by the 
Spaniards would be but a feeble precedent to our condition." 
Emancipation by war, or by confiscation of property, never entered 
into the thoughts of the great English liberators. No good end 
is ever accomplished by fraud, injustice, or violation of private 
right. No more terrible picture can be presented than that of a 
multitude of negroes, with fierce and inflammable passions, roused 
up in a single day against the wives and families of their masters, 
and ordered by one invested with authority to enjoy to the full 
the wild justice of revenge. When this war ends, and men can 
breathe and think calmly on the past, the true character of Mr. 
Lincoln's proclamation will be estimated righteously. We can 

as a people have been much higher at this period, and the present necessity for 
the introduction of foreign labour have been avoided. But the opportunity was 
lost, never to be altogether regained ; and the indiscriminating kindness of the 
friends of the negro has wrought great detriment to him. In a country naturally 
offering every encouragement to idleness, in effect the policy seems to have been 
still further to enable the labouring classes to satisfy their limited wants at the 
cheapest possible rate, and the least exertion of either mind or body. And now, 
while it is difficult to obtain sufficient revenue for necessary public purposes, large 
sums are expended by the planting body on the introduction of immigrants to 
prosecute the cultivation of estates for which the native population no longer furnish 
continuous labour in sufficient amount." — Report of the Governor of St. Vincent 
to the Foreign Secretary, presented to Parliament in July, 1863. 

Similar in principle is a clause in the Consolidated Immigration Bill adopted 
by the Demerara Court of Policy, on the 26th of August last : — 

" Further, the Court requests that his Excellency the Governor will express 
the strong hope of the Court that any captured Africans above the age of 15 
years introduced after this date shall be subject to indenture for five years, the 
Court being satisfied that while the extension of time would be a boon to the em- 
ployers, it would also tend to the future welfare of the Africans, inasmuch as it 
would keep them for a longer time under the discipline of instruction and settled 
habits, and so render them less liable to retire beyond the bounds of civilization 
on the expiration of their terms of service." 



( xix ) 

already righteously estimate the conduct of the negroes: they 
have resisted the strongest incitements to murder, robbery, and 
outrage, that could possibly be offered to a multitude. Unin- 
fluenced by open and secret inducements to treachery and flight, 
these negroes have faithfully served their owners' families through- 
out the most fiery ordeal a nation ever underwent. When they 
did not guard the homestead or till the fields, they followed the 
fortunes of their masters, and nursed them, when prostrated by 
wounds or sickness, with all the tenderness of a woman and the 
fidelity of a friend. The conduct of the negro has given the lie 
to all the calumnies so industriously circulated respecting the 
cruelty of owners to their slaves. It has proved, too, that the 
negro may be trusted with liberty. There may, indeed, have 
been in the South some few harsh men, as there are in every 
country and in every walk of life. Some rare Legrees, — the 
living types selected by Northern novelists as the representatives 
of all, — may have moved down South, and outdone the worst of 
Southerns as taskmasters. Under the strongest temptations and 
the most powerful incitements the negroes, as a class, have given 
proofs of the most touching faithfulness ; and this, while it is one 
of the most remarkable facts in history, proves that, as a rule, the 
Southerns have been mild and liberal to their slaves; such, too, 
is the testimony of every unbiassed writer who has visited the 
South. 

Nor should it be forgotten that there is a wide difference be- 
tween instituting slavery and inheriting it — between the policy 
of a nation which first introduced it into a country and that which 
was burdened with it by its predecessors. While we utterly deny 
the right of any man or people to infringe the personal liberty 
of another, provided he be not guilty of crime, even for his ma- 
terial good, we must pause before we approve of the sudden 
liberation of 4,000,000 of slaves, who are the offspring of six 
generations of slave fathers. We do not let out from the cage 
without preparation the brood whose progenitors have been 
descended from caged parents. It is to England and to English 
Kings and Queens that the South is indebted for her inheritance 



( xx ) 

of slavery.* It has been said, indeed, that " slavery under the 
English rule was of the very mildest form, and scarcely deserving 
of the name."f What becomes then of the scathing denunciations 
of Wilberforce, Clarkson, and Buxton ? Were the narratives of 
horror told by these great men all false, and their pictures drawn 
by a heated imagination ? A more ancient and, with all respect, 
a greater authority for the terrible character of slavery under 

* "The first negroes sent to the New World were landed at Hispaniola, in 1501, 
by order of the Spanish government. After 1516 a company of Genoese mer- 
chants conducted the trade, and in 1562 were followed by the English, Sir John 
Hawkins having discharged a cargo there in that year. The news of his success 
reaching Queen Elizabeth, she became a partner with him in further voyages. 
In 1618 James I. granted a charter to Sir Robert Rich and others, giving them 
the exclusive privilege of carrying on such commerce. A second charter was 
given by Charles I. in 1631, and so extensive did the business become, that the 
company erected numerous forts and warehouses on the coasts of the "West Indies 
for their defence and convenience. During the reign of Charles II. (1 662) a third 
company was organized, with the Duke of York at its head, under an engage- 
ment to furnish the island colonies with 3000 slaves annually. In 1672 the 
fourth and last exclusive company was chartered, the King being one of its 
shareholders; it continued in existence until the Revolution of 1688, when all 
such privileges were abolished. But the company did not give up its operations ; 
it seized the ships of private traders, until its functions were again recognised, 
and from the year 1739 to 1746 Parliament voted it £10,000 annually, in conse- 
quence of the trade having been made free to all persons in 1698. Queen Anne, 
in 1713, entered into a treaty with the King of Spain to furnish all his colonies 
with negroes for thirty years, within which time at least 144,000 were to be im- 
ported. Her Majesty, in a speech from the throne, boasted of her success in se- 
curing to Englishmen a new market for slaves. Various regulations were enacted 
for prosecuting the trade, the last of which was made in 1788. Large numbers 
of Africans were introduced into England, and, as a mark of servitude, wore a 
collar with the names of their owners. Unless the Spanish imported them at an 
early day into Florida, it does not seem that slaves were landed on the continent 
of North America until 1620, when a Dutch vessel brought to Virginia twenty 
negroes, who were sold ; and this was the germ of slaveholding in the States, 
where, up to 1740, 130,000 had been received; between that date and 1776, 
170,000 ; from which to 1808, 50,000 ; making a total of 350,000."— Letter to 
a Pennsylvanian, by George M'Henry. 
f "Edinburgh Review," October, 1861. 



( x *l ) 

British rule, is at hand. In a sermon but seldom read, however 
earnestly the other works of Bishop Butler are studied, there is 
the following striking passage : — 

" Of these our colonies, the slaves ought to be considered as 
inferior members, and therefore to be treated as members of them, 
and not merely as cattle or goods, the property of their masters. 
Nor can the highest property possible to be acquired in these 
servants cancel the obligation to take care of their religious in- 
struction. Despicable as they may appear in our eyes, they are 
the creatures of God, and of the race of mankind for whom 
Christ died ; and it is inexcusable to keep them in ignorance of 
the end for which they were made, and the means whereby they 
may become partakers of the general redemption. On the con- 
trary, if the necessity of the case requires that they may be treated 
with the very utmost rigour that humanity will at all permit, as they 
certainly are, and for our advantage made as miserable as they 
ivell can be in the present world; this surely heightens our obli- 
gation to put them into as advantageous a situation as we are 
able, with regard to another." 

Now, when we find, according to the census, 488,000 free 
coloured persons, of whom 400,000 are in the South, we see the 
promise of universal but gradual emancipation. We believe 
that the exasperating arrogance and irritating menaces of the 
Northerns have done far more to embitter slavery than either 
a liking for the institution or interest in its profits to the South. 
On the recognition of the Southern States, and when they 
shall be associated with the family of nations, . the action of a 
world of freemen will be most strongly felt upon their institu- 
tion, and then wise and good men will devise some plan for 
gradual liberation. The negroes, to carry out Butler's idea, will 
then become members of the States, and as such contribute to 
the general burdens. With the example of our West India 
Islands before her, the South may well be excused from granting 
universal liberation at the dictation of her enemies. Did she do 
so now, the act would be attributed to weakness or despair. 

C 



( xxii ) 
IV. 

IS IT TRUE THAT THE WAR WAS UNDERTAKEN BY MR. LINCOLN AND 
THE NORTHERNS FOR THE LIMITATION OR ABOLITION OF SLAYERT ? 

Mr. Lincoln was not elected President in order to win by 
force of arms the liberation of the slaves. He would not have 
had a chance of election had he proposed to undertake the task. 
He sought for the Presidency as one determined to uphold the 
existing institutions of the United States, and amongst these in- 
stitutions slavery. We suppose he knew, and that his friends 
knew, the principles entertained by the constituencies, and that 
he and they framed their language to accord with sentiments 
popularly held. His language is clear, precise, and unmistake- 
able, and affords incontrovertible evidence against the cry. In 
what is called the Chicago platform, Mr. Lincoln thus marks out 
his political creed : — 

" The maintenance inviolate of the Eights of the States, 
and especially the right of each State to order and control its 
own domestic institutions according to its own judgment ex- 
clusively, is essential to that balance of power on which the per- 
fection and endurance of our political fabric depends." 

The words " domestic institutions," in the above extract, con- 
stitute the conventional phrase for " slavery." In I860, then, 
and prior to any anticipation of secession or war, even the Repub- 
licans engaged to maintain " State rights" and " slavery." Of 
these two, slavery has been firmly upheld in practice; for the 
latest Northern law, as far as it exists by proclamation, is that 
loyal owners should retain all their rights over slaves. As all 
Republicans are doubtless loyal men, their rights are unim- 
peachable, if they possess or acquire slaves. How State rights 
are upheld let the mode in which the conscription was carried out 
in New York decide. 

Nor did the Republicans or Mr. Lincoln purpose to make any 
alteration in the Fugitive Slave Law. In his inaugural address 
Mr. Lincoln, reciting the fugitive slave clause of the Federal 
Constitution, thus comments on it: — 

"It is scarcely questioned that this provision was intended 



( xxiii ) 

by those who made it for the reclaiming of what we call 'fugitive 
slaves/ and the intention of the lawgiver is the law. All mem- 
bers of Congress swear their support to the whole Constitution, 
to this provision as well as to any other." He then alludes to 
an amendment to the Constitution, to be proposed in Congress, 
to the effect that the Federal Government should never interfere 
with the domestic institutions of States, including slavery; and 
he says: — " To avoid misconstruction, I say that, holding such a 
provision to be constitutional law, I have no objection to its being 
made express and irrevocable. "* That addition was formally 
engrafted on the Constitution, and assented to by the President, 
on March 3, 1861. 

A passage from Mr. Lincoln's inaugural address proves suffi- 
ciently that he had, when the address was delivered, no intention 
of entering upon war for the manumission of the slave: — 

" I have," he says, " no purpose, directly or indirectly, to in- 
terfere with the institution of slavery where it exists. I believe I 
have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so." 

He concludes with these remarkable words: — "I reiterate 
these sentiments (i. e., those propounded at Chicago), and in doing 
so I only press upon the public attention the most conclusive 
evidence of which the case is susceptible, that the property f 
(slaves, as well as the rest), peace, and security of no section are 
to be in anyways endangered by the now incoming administra- 
tion." 

So far, then, the intentions and policy of Mr. Lincoln and his 
party were directed to the maintenance of slavery. Of this there 
cannot be a doubt. The tentative and hesitating measures after- 
wards adopted are to be attributed, as Mr. Seward says, " to the 

* Hence it appears that the decree of the Montgomery convention is not " the 
only instance, or the first instance, in history of an irreversible law." See Pro- 
fessor Cairnes, Letter I., p. 5. It is plain that Mr. Lincoln and his official 
addresses contradict the assertions of the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, who asto- 
nished his audiences by stating that " the fugitive slave law formed no part of 
the Constitution." 

f The use of this word "property" by Mr. Lincoln is remarkable: the Ultra- 
abolitionists never allowed that there could exist any " property" in slaves. 



( xxiv ) 

necessities of war" — as others believe, to the interested party of 
theUltra-aboKtionists. As a party, the abolitionists are numeri- 
cally the smallest in the States ; but they are ever active, always 
energetic, and, we must add, not seldom unscrupulous. They are 
at once powerful and dangerous auxiliaries. As defeat and dis- 
aster crowded upon the Federal Government, this party dinned 
into the ears of Mr. Lincoln that "a bold policy," a " blow struck 
for the emancipation of the negro," would at once regain the for- 
feited sympathies, and perhaps win the support, of England, — 
would furnish an ostensible motive for the continuance of the 
war, and would materially injure the South. At first, then, a 
proposition was made to purchase the slaves of loyal owners, and 
the Federal Government actually prepared to vote money to 
assist the border States in buying up the liberties of the slaves. 
There were no sellers, however — or sellers only of the halt, the 
lame, and the blind ; nor would the States contribute money for 
emancipation. The States in general refused to co-operate in 
the scheme. Next it was proclaimed that every slave should 
obtain his freedom in the year of grace 1899, which reminds us 
of the " apprenticeship for 99 years," once adopted by the Ame- 
rican Government. Even the negroes ridiculed this proposition, 
which, under pretence of making a man free, continued his sla- 
very to a period beyond that of his natural life. Then came the 
famous ordinance, which enacted that the slaves of disloyal 
owners should be made free— - wheu they were taken by the United 
States' armies,* or when by flight they had, as they fondly 

* In his letter to the Springfield convention, Mr. Lincoln asserts his right to 
emancipate the slaves of the South, in his capacity as Commander-in-Chief. 
" The Commander-in-Chief," he says, " in time of war, is at liberty to use the 
law of war, and to destroy the property of the enemy." Lawyer as he is, Mr. Lin- 
coln mistakes the law of war. That law refers only to the public property of 
the enemy, not to the private property of individual enemies. Slaves are private 
property, and therefore not liable to confiscation or destruction. When the 
generals of the Federal armies pour Greek fire into private houses, in the dead of 
night, without due notice, it is only consistent that the generalissimo should show 
little respect for the legal distinction between public and private " property." 

The Northerns but repeat against the South the policy of the English Govern- 
ment against the American colonies during the great American war. It is remark- 



( XXV ) 

hoped, secured their own liberty of action. The slaves of 
loyal owners, however, were to remain slaves ! We have thus 
a formal law of the Federal States for bartering away the li- 
berty of the slave, to purchase a master's confession of loyalty 
to the Northern cabinet. Every man who takes what is called 
the oath of allegiance is deemed loyal. The process is nei- 
ther tedious nor difficult. Consequently, a slave owner in 
Kentucky, or Tennessee, or Louisiana, desirous of retaining 
possession of his slaves in the proximity of the Union armies, 
has but to take an oath, and he decides the question of liberty 
or slavery. The hideous creation, which now passes for the 
goddess of liberty, rivets the manacles which she professes to 
break in sunder; and the presence of Union armies shuts out, 
even from redemption, the blacks, to liberate whom, we are told, 
the Union armies were assembled. If there were those hardships 
and sufferings in slave life which the sympathizers with the 

able that even Mr. Lincoln's slave-arming proclamation is copied from one issued 
by Lord Dunmore : — 

" By his Excellency the "Right Hon. John, Earl of Dunmore, his Majesty's Lien- 
tenant and Governor- General of the Colony and Dominion of Virginia, and 
Vice-Admiral of the same: — 

"a proclamation. 
" To the end that peace and good order may the sooner be restored, I do re- 
quire every person capable of bearing arms to resort to his Majesty's standard, 
or be looked upon as traitors to his Majesty's crown and government, and thereby 
become liable to the penalty which the law inflicts upon such offences, such as 
forfeiture of life, confiscation of land, &c. And I do hereby further declare all 
indentured servants, negroes, or others (appertaining to rebels) free, that are 
able and willing to bear arms, they joining his Majesty's troops as soon as may 
be, for the more speedily reducing this colony to a proper sense of their duty to 
his Majesty's crown and dignity. I do further order and require all his Majesty's 
liege subjects to retain their quit rents, or any other taxes due, or that may be- 
come due, till such time as peace may be again restored to this at present most 
unhappy country ; or till they may be demanded of them for their former salu- 
tary purposes by officers properly authorized to receive the same. 

" Given under my hand, on board the ship William, off Norfolk, this 7th day 
of November, in the sixth year of his Majesty's reign (a. d. 1775). 

"God save the King," 



( xxvi ) 

North so pathetically describe, it is the Genius of the Northern 
Government which ratines and renders them enduring. The 
language of the Northern States is, " swear allegiance to the 
Washington Cabinet, and you may possess and work as many 
slaves as you please."* "When such an ordinance has been pub- 
licly proclaimed, and acted upon, it is positively amazing that 
any writer or preacher should maintain that the war was under- 
taken chiefly, or at all, for the liberation of the slave. 

Much stress has been laid upon the fact that a treaty for the 
suppression of the slave trade has been ratified between the Bri- 
tish and United States' Cabinets since the commencement of the 

* The latest reference to emancipation is to be found in the President's strange 
letter to the Springfield convention. In that extraordinary composition Mr. 
Lincoln says he agrees with "the Springfield conventionists in condemning a 
contest of arms for the liberation of negroes, provided the conventionists are for 
the Union." The only meaning that can be put on this sentence is, that the 
President would surrender the question of manumission on condition of the resto- 
ration of the Union. Indeed, this follows from what he had said previously : 
since, if the Southerns re-entered the Union, they would be loyal men, and there- 
fore legally entitled to hold their slaves. 

The circular of Mr. Seward, dated September 22, 1 862, puts the emancipation 
proclamation of Mr. Lincoln in its true light, i. e., as a military measure intended 
to cripple the South, not to benefit the negro : — 

"I have already informed our representatives abroad of the approach of a 
change in the social organization of the rebel States. This change continues to 
make itself each day more and more apparent. In the opinion of the President, 
the moment has come to place the great fact more clearly before the people of the 
rebel States, and to make them understand that if these States persist in impos- 
ing upon the country the choice between the dissolution of this government, at 
once necessary and beneficial, and the abolition of slavery, it is the Union, and 
not slavery, that must be maintained and saved. With this object, the Presi- 
dent is about to publish a proclamation in which he announces that slavery will 
no longer be recognised in any of the States which shall be in rebellion on the 
1st of January next. While all the good and wise men, of all countries, will re- 
cognise this measure as a just and proper military act, intended to deliver the 
country from a terrible civil war, they will recognise at the same time the mode- 
ration and magnanimity with which the Government proceeds in a matter so 
solemn and important." 

Had the President through feelings of philanthropy conceived the idea of 
emancipating the slaves, he certainly would not have reserved all action until dire 
necessity made it useful as a military resource. 



( xxvii ) 

civil war. It may be well to examine whether that treaty is 
worth the paper on which it is written. On this subject the 
following remarks, communicated by a friend, appear to be con- 
clusive. 

"The treaty just concluded between the British and American 
Governments, in reference to the suppression of the African slave 
trade, having attracted considerable attention in this country, it 
may not be out of place to inquire whether the Federal Govern- 
ment has exceeded its constitutional powers derived from the 
States, and whether it will be able to perform in good faith its 
part of the agreement. To those familiar with the framework of 
the United States' Government it is known that the authority 
exercised by it is only derivative, and in no manner original. A 
treaty made some years ago between theKepublic of Switzerland 
and a special envoy of the United States, which gave the citizens 
of both nations a right to hold real estate in either country, was 
declared null and void, in consequence of no such power having 
been delegated to the general government, the individual States 
retaining exclusive dominion, which is sovereignty over the soil. 
The Lyons-Seward treaty may not, therefore, be worth the pa- 
per upon which it is written. 

" The Federal constitution thus alludes to the African slave 
trade, Article i. sect. 9: — ' The migration or importation of such 
persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to 
admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the year 
1808, but a tax or duty may be imposed upon such importation, 
not exceeding ten dollars for each person.' By an amendment 
to the constitution, made shortly after its adoption, and prior to 
the year named, this implied authority was taken away from the 
central head, in Article 1, viz., ' The powers not delegated to 
the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the 
States, are reserved to the States, respectively, or to the peopled 

"It will thus be seen that all Federal treaties in reference to 
the Slave trade are as unconstitutional as those in regard to real 
estate. The Southern States in their individual capacity, how- 
ever, have had for many years legislative enactments forbidding 
the traffic, making it a penal offence; and hence, as long as they 



( xxviii ) 

remained in the Union, the existing treaties were not disturbed, 
their citizens having no interest in that description of commerce. 
Can as much be expected from the New Englanders, who are now 
deprived of a portion of their occupation? 

" No great reliance can be placed on the statements of Northern 
politicians respecting slavery; they are pro- slavery men, or anti- 
slavery men, as the occasion serves. It will hardly be credited 
that the present Federal representative in London, Mr. Charles 
Francis Adams, a few weeks prior to his departure from America, 
offered the following resolution in the House of Representatives, 
4 That no amendment to this constitution, having for its object 
any interference within the States with the relation between 
their citizens and those (slaves) described in sect. 2 of the 1st 
article of the constitution or other persons, shall originate within 
any State that does not recognise that relation within its own 
limits, or shall be valid without the consent of every one of the 
States comprising the Union.' Yet Mr. Adams affects to be an 
abolitionist, when waited upon by a deputation of the British and 
Foreign Anti- Slavery Society." 



THE 

SOUTHERN CONFEDERACY 



AND THE 



AFRICAN SLAYE TRADE. 



TO THE EDITOR OF THE DAILY NEWS. 

Sir, — Will you allow me to add a few observa- 
tions to what has been so ably said in your columns 
with reference to the probable intentions of the 
Southern Confederacy in relation to the reopening 
of the African slave trade? 

In the article to which reference has been made, 
from the Saturday Eeview (whose exposition of the 
Southern case I suppose we may regard as authori- 
tative), the existence of any design on the part of 
the Southern leaders to renew this traffic is vehe- 
mently denied. The charge, we are told, " is not 
merely unfounded in fact, but bears the stamp of 
absurdity on its very face." This is strong assertion ; 
but if strong assertion could establish a fact, the 
fact in question would have been established before 
now, Mr. Yancey having some nine months ago, in 

B 



( 2 ) 

your columns, advanced the same statement with 
no less energy, but having received in the same 
columns signal refutation and ample exposure. It 
would be idle now to add anything to the super- 
abundant evidence which you then produced as to 
the views entertained upon this subject by leading 
public men in the South. Every reader of your 
paper knows that an influential section of the most 
energetic politicians in the Southern States — many 
of them intimately associated with the present se- 
cession movement, and among the number Mr. 
Yancey himself — have for several years been en- 
gaged in an active agitation for the repeal of the 
Federal law which restrains the traffic, and have 
urged their demands, not at all exclusively, or even 
principally, upon State-right grounds, but chiefly 
upon the broad principles of free trade. I do not 
propose, therefore, to add anything (though it would 
not be difficult to do so) to the ample evidence as 
to the state of opinion in the South upon this 
question which was then laid before the public ; but 
there are some arguments by which the writer in 
the Saturday Review seeks to give plausibility to his 
denial, on which, with your permission, I should be 
glad to make a few remarks. 

The Saturday Reviewer declares that to assert 
that " the seceding States entertain the intention to 
reopen the African slave trade," is to assert what 
"bears the stamp of absurdity on its very face." 
Yet only a few lines lower down the same writer 



( 3 ) 

tells us that " Cuba and Brazil have received their 
human cargoes." Now, if Cuba and Brazil find it 
profitable to receive their human cargoes, will the 
Keviewer inform us in what consists the " absurdity" 
of supposing that the States of the Confederacy, in 
the majority of which the conditions of industry are 
as nearly as possible identical with those in Cuba 
and Brazil, may find their interest in operations of 
the same kind ? If it pays to import " savages" to 
raise sugar on the plantations of Cuba, why should 
it not pay to import them into Louisiana for pre- 
cisely the same purpose ? Nay, is it not certain 
that one cause which has hitherto given to the 
sugar producers of Cuba that advantage over their 
rivals in the sugar States of the South, which the 
latter have attempted to contravene by heavy pro- 
tective duties, is the cheapness of their labour — a 
cheapness for which they are indebted to the Afri- 
can slave trade ? The truth is, that the question 
stands for both on precisely the same footing ; and 
the inducements which have been sufficient to keep 
open the slave trade in Cuba in defiance of treaties, 
and in violation of engagements paid for with Bri- 
tish money, exist not less certainly in the Southern 
States, and would doubtless, were certain hindrances 
which now obstruct their action removed, issue in 
exactly the same result. 

But, says the Saturday Reviewer, " the interests 
and feelings of the planters are opposed to the trade." 
But of what planters ? Of the planters in the 

b2 



( 4 ) 

Border States, or of those in the Gulf States? From 
the manner in which the Reviewer refers to the in- 
ternal slave trade — that between the several States 
— we are left in doubt whether he is prepared to 
admit the existence of this traffic on a scale large 
enough to affect sensibly Southern interests, or whe- 
ther, as he has denied other notorious facts con- 
nected with the condition of the South, it pleases 
him to deny this also. But, arguing the case on 
either supposition, if he denies the existence of the 
trade — if his position be, that substantially and in the 
main the owner of the " costly chattel" is also its 
consumer — then perhaps he, who is a political econo- 
mist, will explain how in this case it can be the in- 
terest of any class in the South that slaves should 
be scarce and dear ? Does he mean to say that the 
consumer of a commodity has an interest in keeping 
up its price ? Or, taking the other hypothesis, if 
he admits that the inter-state slave trade exists, then 
he must admit that there is a diversity of- interest 
as between the planters who breed and sell and 
those who buy and use. The planters who breed 
and sell the article will have an interest in maintain- 
ing the price, and therefore in prohibiting foreign 
importations, while those who buy and use will have 
an equally clear interest in its reduction, and there- 
fore in the fullest free trade. The latter hypothesis, 
as every one knows, represents the fact. As regards, 
therefore, the planters of the Border States, the Re- 
viewer's denial is perfectly well founded ; and the 



( 5 ) 

fact that the slave-breeders were powerful enough 
to procure the provision in the Montgomery con- 
stitution against the African slave trade — a pro- 
vision by which, it seems, the idea of an irreversible 
law is realized for the first time in history — shows 
the extent of the slave-breeding interest in the 
Southern States, and furnishes a most complete an- 
swer to the attempts of this writer to slur over the 
question of this detestable traffic. In speaking, 
therefore, of the interest of the Southern planters 
with reference to the question of the African slave 
trade, we must distinguish between the planters of 
the slave-breeding and those of the slave-consuming 
States. The former have a very substantial interest 
in keeping up the price, and therefore in excluding 
the foreign slave ; the latter have an interest no 
less clear in reducing it, and therefore in admitting 
him. The ultimate determination of the question, 
supposing the South to be successful in the present 
war, will depend on the relative power of these two 
parties ; and, keeping in view the quarter of the 
South in which this movement originated, and the 
men into whose hands its guidance has fallen, I, for 
my part, have very little doubt as to what that de- 
termination will be. 

But, again, we are told that the interest of the 
" labouring white population" of the South is op- 
posed to the reopening of the trade. The Saturday 
Review, it must be premised, has a theory that all 
that has been written by American and English tra- 



( 6 ) 

vellers in the Southern States respecting the condi- 
tion of the mass of the white population is mythical, 
and has informed its readers, on what authority does 
not appear, that this population, contrary to what 
is generally supposed, is an industrious, respected, 
and thriving set of men. Into this question I shall 
not now enter. I shall take the case as stated by the 
Reviewer, and, assuming the existence in the South 
of a "white labouring population" (distinct of 
course from peasant proprietors of certain districts), 
I shall ask the reader to consider how their interests 
would be affected by the reopening of the African 
trade. " At present," says the Reviewer, " slave 
and free labour do not come into competition, the 
former being too scarce and too dear to be employed 
in any occupations but those in which it can be em- 
ployed to the best advantage — that is to say, in ac- 
tually producing the staple crops of the country. 
If slave labour were to become very cheap and very 
plentiful, it would probably invade many of the 
occupations hitherto monopolized by white free 
men. These occupations would gradually sink into 
disrepute, as is always the case in a slave state with 
employments reputed servile ; the white man's field 
of labour would be diminished, and his earnings 
lessened by servile competition. There would be 
more slaveowners, but the condition of the non- 
slaveholding free men would be much worse than 
it is at present." The Reviewer's point is, that in 
the event of the slave population being augmented 



( 7 ) 

by importations from Africa, no employment could 
be found for them without introducing slave labour 
into those occupations — principally connected with 
the business of transporting the produce of the 
country along the great rivers — which are now per- 
formed (according to the Reviewer's theory) by 
the white natives of the South ; but, according to the 
observation of American and English travellers, for 
the most part by German and Irish immigrants. 
But has the Reviewer never heard of the "terri- 
tories"? Is he under the impression that Texas is 
already populated to its full capacity ; and can he 
not imagine that some work might be found for the 
new hands in those regions without encroaching on 
the domain of his industrious white friends ? Let 
him listen on this subject to a Southern authority. 
"The South," says Mr. Lee, Professor of Agricul- 
tural Chemistry in the University of Georgia, u has 
now nearly seven hundred thousand square miles 
of unimproved land, and mines of vast extent and 
inestimable value, which require human labour 
alone to render them exceedingly productive. . . . 
Fully to meet the mineral requirements of the South 
will demand the labour of a million men in the 
next twenty years." In view of which facts the 
Professor regards it as "providential that there 
should be so much unemployed power, in human 
muscles, in Western Africa" — muscular power 
" which may be had at from ten to fifteen dollars as it 
exists in each person j" and then, warming with his 



( 8 ) 

subject, he exclaims, u I trace the growing demand 
for negro muscles, bones, and brains, to the good 
providence of God." It would seem, then, that the 
" white labouring population " need be in no appre- 
hension from negro competition. All this, however, 
it must always be remembered, only holds good on 
the supposition that Texas and the " territories " re- 
main with the South. Let the South be shut in 
behind the Mississippi, or even behind the Sabine, 
and the case will be completely changed : the Re- 
viewer's argument will then, I admit, have some 
force ; but this is to suppose that the South has 
failed in the very purpose for which it is now in arms 
— that that result has happened which the Saturday 
Review and those who co-operate in the same credi- 
table cause are doing their utmost to prevent. Con- 
fine the South within the Mississippi, and the inte- 
rest of the planters, not to mention that of the 
" white labouring population," will effectually pre- 
vent any revival of the external trade in slaves : the 
present negro population will be sufficient, and will 
soon become more than sufficient, for the work. 
But give the South its way — permit it to extend its 
domain to the Mexican borders, and there will be 
no difficulty in finding abundance of profitable em- 
ployment for all the slaves that can be imported 
from Africa for half a century to come. 

The Saturday Review, not content with denying 
the charge of an intention to reopen the slave trade 
made against the Southern Confederacy, and with 



( 9 ) 

demonstrating its absurdity in the conclusive man- 
ner we have seen, assumes the tone of a public cen- 
sor, and characterizes the attempt to question its 
statements, "in the face of such evidence," as "simply 
dishonest." " Mr. J. S. Mill," it seems, " has not been 
ashamed to speak of the Confederates in a tone" 
which is highly distasteful to the Saturday Review, 
The force of a rebuke depends on the moral elevation 
of him by whom it is administered ; and it may, 
therefore, be well that Mr. Mill should be made 
aware of the deference due to the moralist whose 
disapproval he has incurred. The following speci- 
men of controversial candour will enable him to form 
his opinion upon this point : — " The South," says 
the Eeviewer, "has had no part in this matter; and 
her present leaders have always been the steadfast 
opponents of the traffic. President Davis, as senator 
from Mississippi in the United States Congress, pro- 
tested against it in the name of his State." President 
Davis did undoubtedly oppose the reopening of the 
African slave trade by the State of Mississippi (which, 
by the way, is not precisely the same thing as 
"protesting against the traffic in the name of his 
State") ; he not only did so, but he explained with 
great precision the grounds of his opposition. The 
following are his words : — " The interest of Missis- 
sippi, not of the African, dictates my conclusion. 
Her arm is no doubt strengthened by a due pro- 
portion of the servile caste, but it might be para- 
lysed by such an influx as would probably follow 



( io ) 

if the gates of the African slave market were thrown 
open. . . . This conclusion in relation to Missis- 
sippi is based upon my view of her present condition, 
not upon any general theory. It is not supposed to be 
applicable to Texas, to New Mexico, or to any future 
acquisitions to be made south of the Rio Grande." 

This is the sort of grounds on which the English 
public is assured that " the present leaders of the 
South have always been the steadfast opponents of 
the traffic f and it is the writer who deals thus with 
evidence who presumes to talk of Mr. Mill "not 
being ashamed" — to do what? — to state truths which 
everyone acquainted with the recent history of the 
South knows to be notorious. 

I am, &c., 

J. E. Cairnes. 

74, Lower Mount-street, Dublin, Nov. 3, 1862. 



TO THE EDITOR OF THE DAILY NEWS. 

Sir, — I ask the favour of room in your columns 
to reply to Mr. Cairnes' remarks, " with reference to 
the probable intentions of the Southern Confederacy 
in relation to the reopening of the African slave 
trade." It is customary to judge of people by their 
actions, and, while doubting the right of anyone to 
criticize the "probable intentions" of others, I may say 
that the charge thus made against the Southerners 



( 11 ) 

is entirely unfounded. Mr. Yancey, in your im- 
pression of the 25th of January last, put this matter 
right, and his remarks have never received " in the 
same columns signal refutation and ample expo- 
sure f nor is it true that " an influential section of 
the most energetic politicians in the Southern States 
— many of them intimately connected with the Se- 
cession movement, and among the number Mr. 
Yancey himself — have been for years engaged in 
an active agitation for the Tepeal of the Federal law 
which restrains the traffic, and have urged their 
demands, not at all exclusively, or even principally, 
upon State-right grounds, but chiefly on the broad 
principles of free trade." Here are Mr. Yancey's 
own words in contradiction of this assertion : — " I 
have never advocated the African slave trade. I do 
not know two public men in the South of any note 
who have done so. The people there are and have 
been almost unanimously opposed to it. The State 
laws, so long in force, prove this, and another strik- 
ing fact. There have not been one hundred slaves 
imported into the South from any quarter for the 
last 53 years. I know of but one small cargo, and 1 
never heard of another. The slave trade is carried 
on between Africa and Cuba alone ; Southern men 
have nothing to do with it. Yankee captains, Yankee 
ships, Yankee ship-chandlers, and Yankee capital, 
are the notorious mainsprings of that trade." 

It may be added that the same charges were made 
against Mr. Yancey in the South long before seces- 



( 12 ) 

sion took place, but were denied by him upon every 
occasion ; this, in itself, shows that such views are in 
no manner popular in the Confederacy. There was 
an implied power given to perpetuate, or rather a re- 
striction imposed upon, the Federal Congress under 
the Constitution, which went into operation in April, 
1789, not to prohibit the African slave trade until 
1808 ; but this clause was neutralized by one of the 
amendments thereto, adopted in September, 1789, 
which reads as follows :— " The powers not delegated 
to the United States by the constitution, nor pro- 
hibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States 
respectively, or to the people." 

Mr. Cairnes, in speaking of the Border States, 
calls their people "slave breeders," and says that 
they "were powerful enough to procure the pro- 
vision in the Montgomery constitution against the 
African slave trade." Now, it so happens that the 
convention which framed the Confederate constitu- 
tion was formed solely by delegates from South Ca- 
rolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and 
Texas, at a time when it was not known whether 
the other States would withdraw from the old Union. 
The argument, then, " that the planters who breed 
and sell the article will have an interest in main, 
taining the price, and therefore in prohibiting foreign 
importations, while those who buy and use will have 
an equally clear interest in its reduction," is per- 
fectly fallacious ; and " the latter hypothesis" does 
not, "as every one knows, represent the truth." It is 



( 13 ) 

untrue that the citizens of the Border States are in 
any sense slave-breeders, and "this traffic" does 
not exist "ona scale large enough to affect Southern 
interests ;" there is no occasion to " distinguish," even 
on economic grounds, as will presently be proved, 
between the planters of the " slave-breeding and 
those of the slave-consuming States." In further 
alluding to the slave trade restriction, Mr. Cairnes 
remarks, " The idea of an irreversible law is realized 
for the first time in history — shows the extent of 
the slave-breeding interest in the Southern States, 
and furnishes a most complete answer to the attempts 
of this writer [Saturday Review] to slur over the 
question of this detestable traffic." While such argu- 
ment, unfounded in fact, refutes itself, it may be 
stated that a constitutional provision is paramount 
to legislative enactment. 

I will now measure swords with Mr. Cairnes as 
a political economist. He says, "if it pays to import 
'savages' to raise sugar on the plantations of Cuba, 
why should it not pay to import them into Louisiana 
for precisely the same purpose? Nay, is it not cer- 
tain that one cause which has hitherto given to the 
sugar producers of Cuba that advantage over their 
rivals in the sugar States of the South, which the 
latter have attempted to contravene by heavy pro- 
tective duties, is the cheapness of their labour — a 
cheapness for which. they are indebted to the African 
slave trade?" The "question" does not stand "for 
both on precisely the same footing." The climate 



( 14 ) 

of the South is somewhat precarious for the culti- 
vation of sugar, and it has been on this account that 
the Louisianians claimed protection, as an offset to 
the grasping propensities of the North. But they 
are now, with drainage, improvements in machinery, 
and altered political conditions, in a position to do 
without a tariff ; but small duties are levied on any 
article entering the Confederate States, except from 
the United States. 

Cotton is a leading staple in Louisiana, and there 
is none produced in Cuba. Land, too, is worth 
relatively more in comparison with the value of 
negroes in Cuba than it is in the South, and hence 
an additional number of labourers beyond the na- 
tural increase is found to be profitable there. The 
very reverse is the case in the States. While the 
soil is better for the pupose in those localities where 
sugar is grown than in Cuba, the early frosts render 
that crop very hazardous ; and although the value 
of slaves is somewhat greater, their skilled labour 
more than compensates for the difference, owing to 
the want of knowledge on the part of newly-im- 
ported Africans. Economic and selfish causes alone 
are enough to prevent persons from wishing their 
property "diluted" by too great a supply. Do the 
cotton speculators at Liverpool desire large receipts 
of that article from abroad just now? Every inch 
of soil in Cuba is under ownership, and from its 
limited extent full cultivation is highly remunera- 
tive. Not so in the Confederate States, with their 



( 15 ) 

vast area of territory ; their inhabitants neither de- 
sire to force the growth of their staples beyond the 
wants of the world, by which they would be injur- 
ing the value of their present productions, nor have 
they the capital to engage in such extensive agri- 
cultural enterprises. It is as disadvantageous to 
farm too great a number of acres in a country of 
large geographical proportions, with a sparse popu- 
lation, and to extract from the soil more than is 
needed for man, as it would be to work too many 
mines of coal or iron in Great Britain, or to con- 
struct a superfluity of ships. 

It is strange that Mr. Cairnes, a professor of 
political economy, should make such a blunder as 
to assert that in the majority of the States of the 
Confederacy "the conditions of industry are as nearly 
as possible identical" with those of Cuba. It is re- 
markable, too, that he, as an abolitionist, should ad- 
vance arguments in favour of the reopening of the 
African slave trade, which the people of those States, 
who certainly know their own interests, reject as 
being entirely unsound. Nor do the Southerners 
want their country overrun with "savages" from 
Africa, and thereby have their whole system of 
labour deranged ; for it must be borne in mind that 
their negroes are a much superior class to the native 
African, having had the advantage of several genera- 
tions of civilization and instruction. 

I do not wish to trespass too much upon your 
space, and will conclude by stating that I was a 



( 16 ) 

member of the Democratic convention which met at 
Charleston in April, 1860; that out of the six hun- 
dred and six delegates, all of whom were represen- 
tative pro- slavery men, there was but one person in 
favour of the African slave trade — a Mr. Gaulden, 
from Georgia. His speech on the subject, repeated 
at Baltimore, occasioned much merriment in conse- 
quence of its absurdity, and was received with de- 
risive laughter, which in this country, I observe, has 
been miscalled " applause." 

As a private gentleman, and a stranger in Eng- 
land, I had hoped to express my dissent from the 
views of Mr. Cairnes, whose name, from his profes- 
sional position, is in a manner public property, with- 
out obtruding my own on your readers. Since, 
however, you make its use the condition of the in- 
sertion of this letter, I beg to subscribe myself, &c, 

George M'Henry. 

Nov. 8, 1862. 



TO THE EDITOR OE THE DAILY NEWS. 

Sir, — Mr. M'Henry, from South Carolina, has 
done me the honour to pass some strictures on my 
letter, which appeared in your paper of the 5th 
inst. ; will you permit me to offer some remarks in 
reply ? 

Mr. M'Henry commences by quoting a passage 
from a letter from Mr. Yancey, which appeared in 



( 17 ) 

your columns last winter, in which that gentleman 
denies that there is any desire on the part of 
Southern politicians for the reopening of the Afri- 
can slave trade — for what purpose I cannot imagine. 
The statement which he quotes was shown by you, 
on the evidence of the writings and speeches of 
eminent and able politicians in the South, to be con- 
trary to fact. Let Mr. M 'Henry show either that 
the extracts which you quoted were forged, or that 
they do not establish the conclusion which they 
were adduced to support, and it will then be time 
enough to bring forward fresh evidence. Of this, 
he may depend upon it, there is abundance, which 
will not fail to be forthcoming when the need for it 
arises. 

Mr. M'Henry is not content with denying that 
the African slave trade is desired ; he denies, further, 
that the internal slave trade exists — at least, "ona 
scale large enough to affect Southern interests." 
Lord Macaulay compared this trade to "the trade 
in pigs between Dublin and Liverpool," and to 
"the trade in coals between the Tyne and the 
Thames ;" but it seems Lord Macaulay was the dupe 
of Southern myth-mongers. "Where so much is 
mythical, it is difficult to know what evidence will 
be considered satisfactory ; but I suppose, if there be 
anything real in the history of the South, it will be 
found in the census. Here at least it will, I sup- 
pose, be admitted we are on the solid ground. I 
will therefore ask Mr. M'Henry to attend to the 

c 



( 18 ) 

following argument by Mr. Senior, which is based 
upon census returns :— " The total number of slaves 
in Virginia in 1840 was 448,886. During the ten 
years ending 1850, the slave population of the 
United States increased at the rate of 28 per cent. 
The number of slaves in Virginia, therefore, in 
1850, ought to have been 574,574; it was only 
473,026. Instead of increasing at the rate of 28 per 
cent., the slaves in Virginia increased at the rate of 
only 5^ per cent. Instead of adding 125,688 to 
their numbers, they added only 24,140. What be- 
came of the missing 101,548 ? It cannot be an- 
swered that they were not born, or that they died. 
The climate of Virginia is one of the best in the 
world ; the labour in the plantations is light ; the 
negroes are well taken care of. Every traveller 
admires the number of healthy children. If the na- 
tural increase of the slaves in the whole Union was 
28 per cent., that in Virginia was probably 35 or 40 
per cent. 

"The question, what became of the missing 
101,548, is answered when we look at the rate of in- 
crease in the States which are consumers instead of 
breeders ; when we find that in Louisiana the in- 
crease was 44 per cent. ; in Mississippi, 57 per cent. ; 
and in Arkansas, 135 per cent. It is to these States, 
and to Texas, Alabama, and Florida, that Virginia 
has exported her human crop ; and it is from them 
that she has received, at the low average price of 
500 dollars per head, fifty millions of dollars for her 



( 19 ) 

100,000 souls. It was to preserve this trade that 
Mexico was robbed of Texas, and afterwards of Ca- 
lifornia and New Mexico ; that Cuba is to be 
snatched, and Jamaica to be annexed ; and that 
every new state, of which the climate is suited to 
the negro, is to be admitted into the Union as a 
slave state." 

It appears, therefore, that, at the lowest compu- 
tation, an average of 10,000 human beings must 
have been exported annually from Virginia during 
the decade under review ; while by making a fair 
allowance for what is incontrovertible, the excep- 
tionally favourable conditions with regard to health 
enjoyed by the Virginian negro, this average is 
raised to no less than 15,000. This is the light 
which the census throws upon the question of the 
internal slave trade ; and the figures which I have 
stated merely represent the dealings of a single State. 
If Mr. M'Henry will only apply the same principle 
of calculation to the returns of the other breeding 
States, he will find that a result less considerable 
in amount, but perfectly analagous, will come out 
in every instance ; he will find, for example, that 
the increase of the slave population in North Caro- 
lina, in Maryland, and in Kentucky, and even in his 
own State of South Carolina, falls greatly below the 
average rate ; while, looking to the hygienic condi- 
tions of those States, it should have risen conside- 
rably above it. 

Mr. M'Henry next objects to my statement that 
c2 



( 20 ) 

" the conditions of industry are as nearly as pos- 
sible identical in Cuba and in the majority of the 
Southern States." And what is his proof that they 
are different ? He says that cotton is not grown in 
Cuba ; which is, I believe, true, but has as much 
bearing upon the question in hand — which is not 
as to the actual products, but as to the conditions 
of industry, the methods of production — as the state- 
ment that potatoes are grown in Ireland ; and, 
secondly, that Cuba is fully cultivated, while the 
Gulf States are not so — a statement which, if it were 
well founded, argues a rapidity of industrial progress 
in Cuba such as the world has never seen, since 
Mr. Merivale, who is not apt to speak at random, 
in the last edition of his work on the Colonies, in- 
forms us that in 1840 " only seven-hundredths of 
Cuba had as yet been brought under cultivation." 
But, in truth, I am not concerned to dispute Mr. 
M'Henry's facts, inasmuch as they all tell directly 
in favour of the conclusion which I seek to establish, 
and directly against that which they are brought 
forward to sustain. All that is necessary for my 
position is, that in Cuba and the South alike, the sys- 
tem of industry is one in which large capitalists em- 
ploy slaves in gangs on plantations in raising a few 
grand staples for the export market. No one who 
knows anything of the South, or of Cuba, will deny 
that the industry of the two countries is identical in 
these respects, and this is all that my argument re- 
quires. 



( 21 ) 

So much for Mr. M'Henry's facts : I come now to 
his economic reasonings ; and, whatever may be the 
case as to other statements made respecting his coun- 
try, these certainly suggest the idea that political eco- 
nomy in the Southern States is at all events a myth. 

It must be remembered that the point which 
Mr. M'Henry undertakes to establish is, that the con- 
ditions of industry are so different in Cuba and the 
Gulf States, that, whereas the slave trade is profi- 
table for the one, it is the reverse of profitable for 
the other. Now, what is his proof of this ? First, 
he tells us that " the climate of the South is some- 
what precarious for the cultivation of sugar, and it 
has been on this account that the Louisianians 
claimed protection, as an offset to the grasping 
propensities of the North." The logic of this sen- 
tence quite eludes me ; but, waiving this, does Mr. 
M'Henry mean to say, that, because the climate of 
the South is less favourable for sugar than that of 
Cuba, therefore the Southern sugar producers can 
afford to pay a higher price for their labour? 
If this be not Mr. M'Henry's point, will he explain 
what is the connexion between the unpropitious 
climate of the South and the independence of the 
Southern planters of imported labour ? for this is 
the point we are discussing. But, secondly, we are 
informed that land in the South is more abundant 
than in Cuba, from which the inference we are ex- 
pected to draw is, that there is less need of slaves to 
till it. What will Mr. De Bow think of this reason- 



( 22 ) 

ing ? It is, however, no exceptional specimen ; all 
Mr. M'Henry's arguments run in the same groove, 
and all have the same peculiarity, that the conclu- 
sion they establish is precisely the reverse of that 
which they are brought forward to support. Thus 
the next fact on which he relies to show that the 
slave trade would be prejudicial to the South is the 
scarcity of Southern capital. a Nor have they ca- 
pital to engage in such extensive agricultural enter- 
prises." As to the fact, Mr. M'Henry and I are 
agreed ; but what then ? If capital be scarce, does 
it follow that it is the interest of capitalists that la- 
bour should be dear ? 

The only plausible] argument in Mr. M'Henry's 
letter (and this is only plausible for those who are 
entirely unacquainted with the facts) is one which 
he rather insinuates than expressly states. He 
suggests that the labour of the imported savage, 
though nominally cheaper than that of the home- 
bred slave, would not be really so. But a moment's 
consideration suffices to expose the fallacy. It is a 
sheer absurdity to talk of the " skilled labour " of 
the plantation slave. The reader may imagine the 
kind of skill which is to be obtained from a poor 
creature who is excluded by law from the merest 
elements of knowledge, and driven to his task by the 
lash of an overseer. The home-bred negro would 
be tamer than the newly-imported savage — that 
would be the one advantage which he would have 
over him — and would, no doubt, on this account 



( 23 ) 

be more valuable, but the inferiority of the savage 
in this respect would be far more than compensated 
by the immense reduction in the price which would 
follow the opening of the African trade. This is no 
matter of speculation. It has been tried over and 
over again in all the West India islands, in Cuba, 
in the South itself, and always with the same result. 
Wherever a few staples are raised on large planta- 
tions by gangs of slaves for the export market, there 
the cheap labour of Africa has always been found 
to be economically profitable ; and, where it has 
not been artificially excluded, has always, in fact, 
been employed. 

I am, &c., 

J. E. Cairnes. 

74, Lower Mount-street, Nov. 11, 1862. 

Mr. M'Henry asks, " Do the cotton speculators 
at Liverpool desire large receipts of that article 
from abroad just now ?" I should say not, and for 
the same reason which leads those who speculate in 
slaves in the South to desire, under like circum- 
stances, to exclude foreign slaves ; but the cotton 
manufacturers, I imagine, do desire that the raw 
material of their industry should be plentiful and 
cheap ; and so, also, I apprehend, the producers ot 
cotton on the Southern plantations desire to have 
at their command a plentiful and cheap labour 
market. 



( 24 ) 



TO THE EDITOR OF THE DAILY NEWS. 

Sir, — In your impression of Thursday last a 
rejoinder was published by Mr. Cairnesto my letter 
in reply to his communication which appeared on 
the 5th instant. Having rebutted all his charges 
of an intention on the part of the South to reopen 
the African slave trade, I had hoped not to trespass 
upon your columns again, but courtesy requires an 
answer to the questions that have been directed to 
me. It is on this account that I ask your further 
indulgence. 

It was supposed that the evidence of Mr. Yancey, 
a gentleman commissioned by the Confederate 
States with the highest diplomatic powers, for the 
purpose of visiting Europe, would have been suffi- 
cient authority for the correctness of my statements ; 
but as that, as well as the testimony furnished by 
the proceedings of the Charleston convention, has 
not been accepted, I must call upon the accuser, 
Mr. Cairnes, to sustain his charge, and demand of 
him the names of the "eminent and able politicians" 
who agree with him that it is to the interest of the 
South that the African slave trade should be re- 
newed. 

Offence will not be taken at the expression 
" myth-monger ;" it is to be regretted, however, 
that in discussing a serious subject, a question of 
fact, corrections of errors should have produced 
irritation ; but " as figures never lie," when fully 



( 25 ) 

stated, Mr. Cairnes' " solid ground " will prove to be 
a quicksand to him. He says : — 

" Where so much is mythical, it is difficult to 
know what evidence will be considered satisfactory ; 
but I suppose, if there be anything real in the history 
of the South, it will be found in the census. Here 
at least it will, I suppose, be admitted we are on 
solid ground. I will therefore ask Mr. M' Henry 
to attend to the following argument by Mr. Senior, 
which is based upon census returns : — ' The total 
number of slaves in Yirginia in 1840 was 448 ; 886. 
During the ten years ending 1850, the slave popu- 
lation of the United States increased at the rate of 
28 per cent. The number of slaves in Virginia, 
therefore, in 1850, ought to have been 574,574 ; it 
was only 473,026. Instead of increasing at the rate 
of 28 per cent, the slaves in Virginia increased at 
the rate of only 5J per cent. Instead of adding 
125,688 to their numbers, they added only 24,140. 
What became of the missing 101,548? It cannot 
be answered that they were not born, or that they 
died. The climate in Virginia is one of the best in 
the world ; the labour in the plantations is light ; 
the negroes are well taken care of. Every traveller 
admires the number of healthy children. If the 
natural increase of the slaves in the whole union 
was 28 per cent., that in Virginia was probably 35 
or 40 per cent. 

" ' The question, what became of the missing 
101,548, is answered when we look at the rate of in- 



( 26 ) 

crease in the States which are consumers instead of 
breeders ; when we find that in Louisiana the increase 
was 44 per cent. ; in Mississippi, 57 per cent. ; and in 
Arkansas, 135 per cent. It is to these States, and to 
Texas, Alabama, and Florida, that Virginia has ex- 
ported her human crop ; and it is from them that 
she has received, at the low average price of 500 
dollars per head, fifty millions of dollars for her 
100,000 souls. It was to preserve this trade that 
Mexico was robbed of Texas, and afterwards of Cali- 
fornia and New Mexico.'" 

This is very easily explained. For many years 
large numbers of people from New England, New 
York, and Pennsylvania, have been removing to the 
States of the north-west with their servants ; a simi- 
lar course has been adopted by the Virginians, who 
have migrated to the south-west, and hence there 
has been a slow increase in the white as well as in 
the black population of their State. Many of their 
citizens, too, own plantations in the extreme South, 
under the charge of some member of the family, 
most generally the eldest son. Within the period 
named, 1840 to 1850, there was in the white popu- 
lation an augmentation of only 20 per cent., while 
in Louisiana it was 42 per cent., in Mississippi, 65 
per cent., and in Arkansas 110 per cent. The same 
applies to " Texas, Alabama, and Florida." 

Mr. Cairnes is quite at sea in regard to figures ; 
and as he has appealed to the census, it is proper 
that he should be informed that in Virginia, between 



( 27 ) 

1790 and 1800, the slave population increased only 
21 per cent., and that was a period when slaves were 
smuggled through her borders. She had had since 
1776 laws prohibiting the African slave trade, which 
were evaded by the Northerners to such an extent, 
that she was obliged also to pass enactments pre- 
venting the importation of negroes from other States 
unless accompanied by their owners, who must be- 
come residents. Similar laws are still in force in 
each of the Southern States. And this is the 
reason why many New Englanders moved to the 
South after their States passed acts of abolition, 
which have been misnamed emancipation. Legisla- 
tion in America has not, therefore, lessened slavery 
to any great extent ; the increase in the several de- 
cades from 1800 to 1860 has been very regular, viz., 
28, 34, 29, 30, 24, 28, and 24 per cent. In Virginia 
for the ten years ending in 1810 the gain was 13 
per cent. ; 1820, 8 per cent. ; 1830, 10 per cent. ; 
1850, 51 per cent, ; 1860, 4 per cent. ; for 1840, 
there was a loss of 4 per cent. It will then be seen 
that the argument, " If the natural increase of the 
slaves in the whole Union was 28 per cent., that in 
Virginia was probably 35 to 40 per cent.," is just as 
fallacious as the assertion that " the climate of Vir- 
ginia is one of the best in the world for raising ne- 
groes." Surely every intelligent person ought to be 
aware that in the cotton States, whose climate assi- 
milates more nearly to that of Africa, the descendants 
of Ham thrive better, and "increase and multiply" 



( 28 ) 

more rapidly than in a more temperate region. It 
is therefore a mistake to allege that there are " ex- 
ceptionally favourable conditions with regard to 
health enjoyed by the Virginian negro." No such 
occupation is known as that of " slave breeding ; " if 
such existed, there would be a great preponderance 
of females over males in Virginia, and vice versa in 
the " consuming" States. It is "sheer absurdity" to 
talk about slave breeding and slave consuming States. 
As to the "robbery" of Texas from Mexico, Louis 
Philippe and Lord Palmerston joined in the "theft," 
by acknowledging the independence of that State in 
1839 ; the "annexation" to the United States did 
not take place until the 1st of March, 1845. Cali- 
fornia is a free State, and there are but 24 slaves in 
New Mexico. 

Mr. Cairnes is a very unfair reasoner ; in the 
matter of the census he presented only the black 
side. I have answered him in black and white. I 
only alluded to the climate of Louisiana being " un- 
propitious" for the cultivation of sugar in comparison 
with that of Cuba. Yet he twists my remark to mean 
" the independence of the Southern planters of im- 
ported labour." He seems to forget that the slave 
owners of the South are the proprietors of the soil, 
and that the relative values of labour and land there 
are different from those of other countries. Mr. 
Seward informs us through his ministers and consuls 
that " it pays" to import Irishmen into the North, 
because they are "consumed" for war purposes ; it 



( 29 ) 

does not, however, follow that the same migration 
into the South would be equally profitable. Indeed, 
the history of the past eighteen months shows clearly 
that the Confederates can get on very well without 
" imported labour ;" yet, to a careless observer, it 
would appear that the " conditions of industry" 
within that time were very similar in both sections 
of the late Union. But the struggle has been for 
"independence on one side, and empire on the other." 
In no two places on the face of the globe are 
the " conditions of industry " identical, and no 
sound thinker can say that they are. They vary 
even in these islands ; flax can be cultivated pro- 
fitably in Ireland, and hops in England, and the 
price of labour is not the same on either side of the 
Channel. 

In reply to his concluding paragraph, it may be 
stated Mr. Cairnes must have relied upon the infor- 
mation ( ?) contained in the works of fiction of Mrs. 
Stowe and others, whose falsehoods have been cor- 
rected over and over again within the past year by 
every English gentleman of intelligence who has 
visited the Confederate States. 

Mr. Cairnes is not content with making misstate- 
ments in reference to the slave trade, but, in an 
effort to cast ridicule on my remarks, he says that 
political economy in the Southern States is a "myth." 
Everyone is conversant with the fact that their lead- 
ing statesmen have for years advocated the common 
sense doctrines of Adam Smith, now called a science, 



( 30 ) 

and they are the first people of moment in modern 
times who have endeavoured to establish unrestricted 
free trade. As far as my poor opinions on that sub- 
ject are concerned, although an amateur, I am per- 
fectly willing to place them side by side with those of 
Professor Cairnes in all he has written upon Ameri- 
can affairs, and will be content to abide by the 
decision of any three political economists in this 
country, Mr. John Stuart Mill excepted. 

I am, &c, 

George M'Henry. 

Nov. 14, 1862. 



TO THE EDITOR OF THE DAILY NEWS. 

Sir, — Mr. M'Henry having "rebutted" my charge 
respecting the intention of the South to reopen the 
African slave trade, has found himself impelled by 
" courtesy " to reply to some questions contained in 
my last letter. I am bound to acknowledge his 
courtesy — the more so, as, after having read his 
letter, I am quite unable to find that he has accom- 
plished the purpose for which he has made this sa- 
crifice of his repose. 

His notion of " rebutting " a charge appears to 
be, that it consists in the reiteration of a statement 
which has been refuted ; and when I remind him 
that his " rebutting " case is affected with this weak- 
ness, he exclaims, " I must call upon the accuser, 



( 31 ) 

Mr. Cairnes, to sustain his charge, and demand of 
him the names of the able and eminent politicians," 
&c. I am really at a loss to know what Mr. 
M'Henry means by coming to me for names. When 
the refutation to which I referred was published in 
your columns, the names were not given in cipher ; 
and the Daily News is surely not so obscure a pub- 
lication but that so distinguished a person as Mr. 
M'Henry, from South Carolina, might obtain access 
to a file of it in the city of London. 

I borrowed in my last letter an argument of Mr. 
Senior, in which the existence and extent of the 
domestic slave trade is clearly shown from the sta- 
tistics of the negro population. Mr. M'Henry com- 
plains that in this argument I have presented the 
black side of the returns only, and he professes to 
have answered me " in black and white." He has 
indeed quoted returns of blacks, and he has also 
quoted returns of whites, but of blacks and whites, 
as compared with one another, I find no traces in 
his letter ; and yet, if we advert to the case of the 
whites at all, it is in this comparison that the whole 
gist of the question lies. Mr. M'Henry is really no 
adept in the manipulation of statistics, and if he 
were well advised would leave his case in the able 
hands in which he found it — those of the Saturday 
Review. That journal knows both how to put a 
case plausibly and how to abandon it when it is 
hopeless. Since, however, Mr. M'Henry wishes to 
have the white as well as the black side of the 



( 32 ) 

picture, I am content to comply with his desire ; and 
it will be for him to judge how far his case is im- 
proved by a fuller treatment. 

In the argument which I quoted from Mr. Senior, 
not to prove the existence, but to illustrate the ex- 
tent of the domestic slave trade, the facts relied 
upon were these : — That whereas in the decade end- 
ing 1850 the slave population throughout the 
whole Southern States increased its numbers at an 
average of 28 per cent., in Virginia (which, in spite 
of Mr. M'Henry's statement to the contrary, I still 
assert to be one of the healthiest of the Southern 
States), the rate of increase was only 5^ per cent. ; 
while, on the other hand, in the warmer and less 
healthy States of the extreme South and West the 
increase was 44, 57, and 135 per cent. From these 
proportions, taken in connexion with the returns of 
the actual negro population in Virginia, an esti- 
mate was formed of the extent of the dealings of 
this State in its human chattels, which gave as re- 
sult an annual export of from ten to fifteen thousand 
slaves. Mr. M'Henry disputes this conclusion, and 
contends that the discrepancies in question do not 
proceed from trading in slaves, but are the result of 
a general migration of the population westward, 
analogous to that which takes place in the Northern 
States. In support of this representation he appeals 
to the returns of the white population ; but, instead 
of quoting those returns, and comparing them with 
those of the black, he produces a medley of figures 



( 33 ) 

which really prove nothing at all, but are intended 
to leave the reader under the impression that the 
returns in question sustain his case. The following 
Table, showing the rate at which the white and 
slave populations respectively have increased in the 
three principal Border States, and in three States in 
the extreme South and West, will enable the reader 
to see how far Mr. M'Henry's statement is borne 
out by the facts : — 

PERCENTAGE INCREASE OP POPULATION IN THE DECADE ENDING 1850. 

Whites. Slaves. 

Virginia, 
Maryland, 
Kentucky, 
Arkansas, 
Mississippi, 
Louisiana, 

It will be seen from the above that, while in the 
former group of States the white population has 
progressed with, on the whole, tolerable regularity, 
the slave population has in two of them scarcely 
advanced at all, and in the third at a rate far short 
of that attained by the white population. On the 
other hand, in the latter group — a group composed 
of States in which it is perfectly notorious that 
plantation labour is far severer than in the former 
— the slave population has, in one instance, increased 
with much greater rapidity than the whites, and 
in another at almost the same rate. Even in 
Louisiana the increase of the slave population has 
not fallen greatly behind that of the whites, al- 

D 



. . . 20-77 


5-21 


. . . 3134 


0-70 


. . . 28-99 


15-75 


. . . 110-16 


136-26 


. . . 65-13 


58-74 


. . . 61-23 


45-32 



( 34 ) 

though the circumstances of that State might well 
lead us to expect this result, being as it is the seat 
of a great commercial city with a large and rapidly 
growing white population ; and its prevailing in- 
dustry — the cultivation of sugar — being, as is well 
known, enormously destructive of slave life. 

But the census furnishes us with the means of 
instituting another comparison, which, as Mr. 
M'Henry appears to value himself on his skill in 
statistical reasoning, it may be well to give him an 
opportunity of studying. In pp. 42-44 of that in- 
valuable record there is a series of tables, in which 
the inhabitants, free and slave, in the several States, 
are classed according to their ages. From these 
tables I have constructed the following statement, 
to which I invite his best intention : — 



EATIO OF WHITE TO SLAVE POPULATION (MALE) 100 BEING TAKEN 

TO EEPEESENT THE EOEMEE. 











Increase 


Decrease 




Between the 

ages of 1 and 

5 years. 


Between the 

ages of 10 and 

15 yeai-s. 


Between the 

ages of 20 and 

30 years. 


per cent, of 
Slave as com- 
pared with 
White popu- 
lation. 


per cent, of 
Slave as com- 
pared with 
White popu- 
lation. 


Virginia, 


White. 


Slave. 


White. 


Slave. 


White. 


Slave. 




7-1 


100 


56 


100 


56 


100 


52 


Maryland, 


100 


24 


100 


27 


100 


20 


. . 


26- 


Kentucky, 


100 


28 


100 


30 


100 


27 




10- 


Arkansas, 


100 


27 


100 


28 


100 


32 


14-3 




Mississippi, 


100 


103 


100 


98 


100 


110 


12-2 


. . 


Louisiana, 


100 


92 


100 


94 


100 


91 




3- 



I think it will not be denied that these propor- 
tions are significant. Take, for example, Virginia, 



( 35 ) 

It appears that up to fifteen years of age the two 
populations maintain exactly their relative position ; 
but after twenty — after the period of physical ma- 
turity has been reached — after the full-grown slave 
has been exported — the slave population of a sud- 
den drops. The case of Maryland is still more 
striking. The slave population actually gains upon 
the white between the ages of five and fifteen, while 
after twenty it undergoes an immense reduction. 
In Kentucky the result is perfectly analogous. 
Compare this with the progress of the population in 
the three slave-consuming States in the South- 
West. We find here a state of things exactly the 
reverse. In Arkansas and Mississippi the relative 
position of the two races up to the age of fifteen 
remains almost unchanged ; but no sooner do we 
reach the age of twenty than in those States of 
severe plantation labour the slave population ex- 
hibits, in relation to the whites, a large increase. 
Louisiana, indeed, in this, as in the former ex- 
ample, seems at first glance to weaken the argu- 
ment, but in fact it strengthens it. The adult 
slave population, instead of gaining on the whites, 
slightly loses ground. But what does this prove ? 
Only that to which every traveller in Louisiana 
testifies — the frightful destruction of slave life which 
cane crushing on the sugar plantations entails. 
Yet, notwithstanding the inroads made on the slave 
population by this cause, and notwithstanding the 
support given to the whites by the rapid growth of 

d 2 



( 36 ) 

New Orleans, the adult slave population in this 
State almost — such is the activity of the slave 
dealer — maintains its relative position. Now, these 
are facts which no mere migration of population 
will account for. If a planter, with his family and 
its following of slaves, removed from Virginia to 
Arkansas, the young and old of both races would 
go together, and the proportion between the two 
populations would remain unchanged. But where 
slave dealing prevails in connexion with slave breed- 
ing, this cannot happen. The slave is sold off as he 
arrives at his maturity, and thus at this point the 
proportion between the slave and free population 
is disturbed. The former falls behind ; the latter 
gains. In a word, that state of things is realized 
which, we find from the census returns, actually 
exists in the slave-breeding States of the South. 

In truth, however, there is something ludicrous 
in the attempt to prove the existence of a slave 
trade in the South by inferences from a census. We 
might as well attempt to meet the historic doubts 
of Archbishop Whately, and prove the existence of 
Napoleon Bonaparte by an appeal to the bills of 
mortality. The thing is notorious. Slave breeding 
and Virginia — " the two ideas," says Mr. Weston, 
" are as indissolubly associated as cotton spinning 
with Manchester, or as cutlery with Sheffield." " Six 
thousand slaves," says Professor Dew — a Virginian 
authority — " are yearly exported from Virginia to 
other States. A full equivalent being left in the 



( 37 ) 

place of the slave, this emigration becomes an ad- 
vantage to the State, and does not check the black 
population as much as, at first view, we might 
imagine ; because it furnishes every inducement to 
the master to attend to the negroes, to encourage 
breeding, and to cause the greatest number possible 
to be raised. Virginia is, in fact, a negro-raising 
State for other States." "Our slaves," says Mr. 
Gholson in the legislature of Virginia, " constitute 
the largest portion of our wealth, and by their value 
regulate the price of nearly all the property we pos- 
sess. Their value, on the other hand, is regulated 
by the demand for it in the Western markets ; and 
any measures which close those markets to us, would 
essentially impair our wealth and prosperity." It is 
now thirty years since Professor Dew estimated the 
annual export of Virginia at 6,000 slaves, but 
slave breeding and slave trading have since that 
time undergone a remarkable development. Mr. 
M'Henry, being a South Carolina man, may perhaps 
have heard of a special committee of the House of 
Eepresentatives in that State, appointed in 1857 to 
report on the extent of the domestic slave trade, 
with a view, by the way — and this will probably in- 
duce him to modify his opinion on another point — 
to consider the expediency of repealing the Federal 
law against the external traffic. In proceeding with 
its task this committee adopted a mode of reasoning 
identical in principle with that of Mr. Senior ; and 
not only so, but, what is still more curious, arrived 



( 38 ) 

at nearly the same conclusion. Mr. Senior's esti- 
mate of the slaves exported from Virginia, between 
1840 and 1850, was 101,548 ; the Carolinian 
authority sets it down at 111,259 ; it thus seems 
that the estimate of the Englishman was sensibly 
within the truth. 

If Mr. M'Henry should not have heard of this 
South Carolina Committee, he at all events has 
heard of the Montgomery Constitution. He is 
familiar with Art. 1, sect. 9, by which the foreign 
slave trade is prohibited, and has doubtless brought 
that important provision under the attention of his 
English friends. That provision, however, is fol- 
lowed by another, the meaning of which, perhaps, 
he will explain. " Congress shall also have power 
to prohibit the introduction of slaves from any State 
not a member of, or territory belonging to, this Con- 
federacy." What introduction of slaves from State 
to State does he suppose the Convention had in view 
when it passed this enactment ? and how does it 
happen to be coupled with that other enactment 
prohibiting the African slave trade ? The common 
view of the case is that — the Montgomery conven- 
tion having been held while the action of the Border 
States was yet undecided — the former member of 
the clause was intended as a bribe to the wavering 
section, and the latter as a menace. The former 
said to the breeding States, " Join our Confederacy, 
and we will protect you from foreign competition ;" 
the latter, " Refuse to join us, and we will exclude 



( 39 ) 

your slaves, and have recourse to Africa." Now, if 
the domestic slave trade be a myth, what is the mean- 
ing of this clause ? 

I think there is no need to recur to Mr. M'Henry's 
economic reasonings on the industrial condition of 
the South. 

I am, &c., 

J. E. Cairnes. 

74, Lower Mount-street, Dublin, Nov. 20, 1862. 



TO THE EDITOR OF THE DAILY NEWS. 

Sir, — Mr. M'Henry appears to have acquiesced 
in my suggestion that he should leave his case in 
the able hands in which he found it ; and, in its 
last number, the Saturday Review has come to the 
rescue of the distressed Confederate. In recurring 
to the subject now, I have no intention, except within 
very narrow limits, to reopen the discussion. There 
is no need of this. My object is simply to note the 
fact, that with a single exception, to which I shall 
presently advert, my arguments throughout two 
columns of small print, devoted to a reply to them, 
have been left absolutely unanswered, and that the 
case stands precisely where I left it. 

In the article in the Saturday Review which in- 
troduced this controversy, it was laid down that the 
interest of the Southern planters to keep up the 
value of slave property by excluding African slaves 



( 40 ) 

is so plain, that the charge against the seceding 
States of an intention to reopen the African slave 
trade was one " which bore the stamp of absurdity 
on its very face." To this I replied by pointing out 
that the alleged absurdity was not felt by the 
planters of Cuba ; and by asking why, if it pays to 
import negroes to raise sugar on the plantations 
of Cuba, it should not pay to import them into 
Louisiana for precisely the same purpose ? To this 
question the Saturday Reviewer has adventured no 
reply. Mr. M'Henry, indeed, did essay an answer ; 
he asserted that the reason it would not pay to in- 
crease the stock of negroes in the Southern States, 
while it did pay to increase it in Cuba, was, that in 
Cuba the fertile land was all under cultivation, 
while on the continent there were vast regions of 
the richest soil which are still unappropriated ; in 
other words, according to Mr. M'Henry, it would 
not pay to increase the stock of slaves in the South 
because there was so much profitable work on which 
slaves might be employed. Does the Saturday Re- 
viewer wish to be understood as endorsing Mr. 
M'Henry's answer ? 

Again, the Reviewer maintained that the reopen- 
ing of the African slave trade was as adverse to the 
interests of the poor whites in the South as to that 
of the planters, supporting this statement by the ar- 
gument that, " if slave labour were to become very 
cheap and very plentiful, it would probably invade 
many of the occupations hitherto monopolized by 



( 41 ) 

white free men." To this I replied by reminding 
the Reviewer that the United States possessed 
Texas and the Territories — districts almost as large 
as the whole area of the present Slave States, and 
at present nearly quite unsettled ; and by suggest- 
ing that work might be found for the new hands in 
those regions without encroaching on the industrial 
monopoly of the poor whites. In his reply he has 
made no reference to this point. I presume, there- 
fore, he is not prepared to deny the existence of 
Texas and the Territories, and that, consequently, 
this portion of his argument is given up. 

So far as to the foreign slave trade ; and now 
what is the Reviewer's position with reference to 
the other portion of the Southern case — the domes- 
tic slave trade ? It is to be feared that the feelings 
of Mr. M 'Henry, as he peruses his advocate's de- 
fence, will sustain a shock not unlike that felt by 
Balak as he listened to the parable of the son of Beor. 
The seer whom Mr. M'Henry called to bless the 
South has cursed it altogether. 

What are the Saturday Reviewer s admissions ? 
He admits that " slaves are sold en masse by men who 
failed in planting or grow weary of it ; and of those 
so sold the majority, perhaps, are sent South." He 
admits that " it is true that there are slave breeders 
in Yirgina." He admits " that the practice of breed- 
ing slaves for sale— or at least of regularly selling 
off the increase among them — does exist in Virginia, 
and perhaps in North Carolina." He admits, lastly, 



( 42 ) 

" that the natural increase of the population — about 
ten thousand per annum — passes into the more 
Southern States/' The Reviewer admits all this ; 
but he seeks to qualify his admissions by certain 
palliations, as he conceives them. He alleges that 
planters and planters' sons emigrate with their slaves 
— a statement which is true within narrow limits, but 
within narrow limits only, as is proved by the compa- 
rative returns of the white and black population given 
in my last letter, with which the Reviewer, though 
he alludes to them, does not attempt to deal ; and 
as is shown, also, by his own remark, that " Southern 
landowners are almost as unwilling as Englishmen to 
quit their ancestral estates." He observes, secondly, 
that " a Southern gentleman will sell a discontented 
slave at his own request ; he will sell a refractory 
slave in order to get rid of him, or a girl that she 
may be married to her lover who belongs to a 
different owner" — accidents of the business which 
I suppose he would have us accept as a fair set 
off against the wholesale rending of family ties, 
and the frequent purchases for the ends of lust, 
which are its ordinary concomitants. Lastly, he 
assures us, and this he seems to regard as his strong 
point, that slave trading in the South is in disrepute. 
To which I can only reply that I have never said 
the trade was reputable. 

But the Reviewer does attempt to deal with one 
of my arguments. I ventured to, assert that, in 
those States in which slaves were kept, not for sale, 



( 43 ) 

but for use, and which on this account are properly- 
called "the slave-consuming States," it could not be 
the interest of those who used them that slaves 
should be dear, resting the statement on the not 
very recondite principle that it is the interest of the 
consumer to buy his goods in the cheapest market. 
Here is the Reviewer's reply, which I present for 
the edification of economists : — 

" The objection was, that it must be the interest 
of the planter, as a consumer of slaves, that slave la- 
bour should be cheap ; and this might have some 
force if slaves were as cotton is to the manufacturer 
— a material to be speedily used up and done with ; 
though, if a manufacturer held a stock of cotton 
worth more than all the rest of his property, we 
doubt whether he would be willing to see the price 
of cotton suddenly reduced one half. But slaves 
are to the planter, not material, but machinery — 
machinery which he expects to work for 40 or 50 
years from the time (14 years old) at which it is 
first set to work. Now, if a manufacturer owns 
£100,000 worth of machinery, and all his other 
wealth is not worth above £25,000, he will certainly 
not desire a change which would make his machinery 
worth only £50,000, even if he could be sure that 
the value of his other property would be increased 
thereby. Nor can the planter desire to see his slave 
property depreciated 50 per cent., by the revival of 
the slave trade, because, though he might be able to 
produce cotton more cheaply, yet as the amount of 



( 44 ) 

available cotton land is almost unlimited, the con- 
sumer would get the whole benefit of that cheapness, 
and the planter would only realize the same rate of 
profit as before on a capital diminished by one 
half." 

It is commonly supposed that protectionism has 
in England been long dead and buried, but the 
above passage shows that this is a mistake. Slave 
industry, it seems, forms an exception to the general 
principle, and, whatever may be the case with other 
countries, wealth in the Southern States may be 
fostered by protective laws. But let us examine 
the familiar fallacies. The Reviewer's position is, 
that although the instruments of production would 
be cheapened, and although (or rather, it would 
seem, because) there is an unlimited field of admi- 
rable fertility for their employment, nevertheless it 
is the interest of the South to exclude the cheapened 
instruments, and to abstain from cultivating the fertile 
field — for what reason does the reader suppose ? — 
lest its interests should suffer by a reduction in the 
price of intruments and products. Why, supposing 
the price of cotton and slaves to fall, does it follow 
that the planter must lose ? If the price falls, it is 
because the commodity is multiplied ; and, before 
the Reviewer is justified in assuming that the change 
would be a loss, he must show that the proportional 
fall in price would exceed the proportional increase 
in quantity ; he must show, further, that with the 
increased means of production no other article could 



( 45 ) 

be raised than cotton ; he must show, lastly, what 
he assumes in the teeth of well-established principles, 
that the European consumer would get the full 
benefit of the cheapened cost. A considerable in- 
crease in the exports of the South to Europe would 
involve a readjustment of what Mr. Mill calls the 
equation of international exchange between the two 
continents, and it is by no means probable — much 
less certain — that the effect of this upon the price 
of cotton would be that which the Reviewer assumes. 
In short, the Reviewer's position involves the mon- 
strous paradox that the planting interest in the 
Southern States would be injured by a change which 
would place at its disposal a practically unlimited 
supply at once of cheap labour and of cheap land ; 
and that planters, who, as he admits, are in the 
habit of buying slaves in the Northern markets at 
the price of 1,000 dollars for the able-bodied slave, 
would, in a pecuniary sense, be losers by being per- 
mitted to import them at a quarter of the sum. It 
seems idle to. pursue the argument further, but I 
cannot take leave of it without adverting to a dis- 
tinction which the Reviewer lays clown. He says 
that my argument might be good, if slaves corre- 
sponded to material, " but slaves," he adds, " are to 
the planter not material, but machinery," and on 
this account my argument fails. It seems, then, 
that the interest of producers as regards materials 
and machinery is not the same ; while it is their 
gain that material should be cheap, it is their gain 



( 46 ) 

that machinery should be dear. This is a dis- 
tinction which, I apprehend, will be new to political 
economists. Perhaps it would be well, before the 
Reviewer commits himself definitively to the doc- 
trine, that he should test it by consulting the first 
manufacturer he happens to meet. 

I am, &c, 

J. E. Cairnes. 

Queen's College, Galway, Dec. 15, 1862. 



TO THE EDITOR OF THE DAILY NEWS. 

Sir, — After having defeated all Mr. Cairnes' ar- 
guments advanced in order to prove that the people 
of the Confederate States would not only find it 
to their interest, but that it was their " probable 
intention" to reopen the African slave trade, and 
disproved his assertions in reference to the internal 
traffic in negroes, I did not think it necessary to reply 
to his letter published on the 24th ultimo, consider- 
ing that, like many persons, he was desirous of hav- 
ing the last word. But I observe that he is preju- 
diced and therefore unable to understand the matters 
he has attempted to elucidate, even after they have 
been fully explained. I now again ask the favour of 
room in your columns, in consequence of the open- 
ing remarks in his communication inserted in your 
impression of the 18th instant, couched in the fol- 



( 47 ) 

lowing words, in which discourtesy is mistaken for 
smartness : — 

" Mr, M'Henry appears to have acquiesced in 
my suggestion that he should leave his case in the 
able hands in which he found it ; and in its last 
number the Saturday Review has come to the rescue 
of the distressed Confederate." 

As Mr. Cairnes has not appreciated my motive 
for silence, I will, in relieving him of his misappre- 
hension, expose the misstatements and illogical 
reasonings of his two last productions, leaving the 
eminent journal he attacks to take care of itself, 
doubting not that its great influence will in no 
manner be impaired by the angry broadside of 
"so distinguished a person" as the Galway Pro- 
fessor, or, to use his own language, the " distressed 
Irishman." 

Mr. Cairnes occupies a large space with cavilling 
at an expression correctly used by me, namely, the 
word " rebutted." I regret that in advocating the 
cause of truth I should be obliged to respond to ar- 
guments so encumbered with matters irrelevant to 
the subject under discussion, and am surprised that 
he, who with so much self-complacency, ventures to 
criticise my style, should be so careless and un- 
polished in his own. He 'affects to be astonished 
that he should be called upon to sustain his charges 
against the South, when, after citing all that had 
been published in the Daily News, he offered in his 
second letter to produce " abundance of fresh evi- 



( 48 ) 

dence." Why is this " evidence" not forthcoming ? 
It can only be because there is none to bring for- 
ward. He casts the blame for his mistakes regarding 
the returns of the census on Mr. Senior ; and while 
he again deals extensively in extracts from that 
" invaluable record," which was introduced by him 
into the correspondence, but unfortunately for him 
only strengthens the statements made by me, he 
ridicules the very authority which he thus presents, 
by saying that " there is something ludicrous in the 
attempt to prove the existence of the slave trade by 
inferences from the census." 

I do not pretend to be an " adept in the mani- 
pulation of statistics," and am content to leave that 
occupation in Mr. Cairnes' hands. I merely present 
figures as they are in a clear manner, with as few 
words as possible, without any effort to throw dust 
in the eyes of the reader. In my last I passed over 
several blunders in arithmetic, but cannot permit 
the following passage to remain unnoticed : — " If a 
planter with his family and its following of slaves 
removed from Virginia to Arkansas, the young and 
old of both races would go together, and the propor- 
tion between the two populations would remain un- 
changed." Exactly the reverse would be the case, 
in consequence of the black outnumbering the white 
members of the migrated family ; yet he repeats 
this " absurdity," although he had been informed 
that many of the Virginians owned plantations u in 
the extreme South, under the charge of some mem- 



( 49 ) 

ber of the family, most generally the eldest son. 
Virginia is certainly one of the healthiest of the 
Southern States for white persons, but the negroes 
who reside there are subject to rheumatism and 
other diseases quite unknown in climates more con- 
genial to their physical organization. 

It is untrue that there is a " frightful destruction 
of slave life in the extreme South." Surely the 
" medley of figures" presented disprove this. Mr. 
Cairnes labours under the impression that sugar is 
the only production of Louisiana, and gives that as 
a reason for a mortality which exists only in his 
own imagination ; the cotton crop is more impor- 
tant in its character, sugar being cultivated only in 
particular situations. Nor is the cultivation of the 
latter staple more arduous to the hands employed 
than the former, and neither labour is so hard as 
digging potatoes, cutting peat, or working in the 
collieries of England or Ireland. Notwithstanding 
that the sugar, cotton, and tobacco crops of the 
South are at present as unremunerative to the 
planters as the want of the raw material is embar- 
rassing to the manufacturers of this country, the 
slaves are as well fed and taken care of as ever — 
there is no cry of starvation among them. 

I have fairly broken down all Mr. Cairnes' 
charges in reference to the " intention " of the 
Southerners to reopen the African slave trade ; in 
regard to his assertions concerning an internal slave 
traffic ; in relation to his views on political economy 

E 



( 50 ) 

in connexion with American affairs ; and I now 
propose to show how unsound are the positions he 
takes in his last letters. He informs us that the white 
population in Virginia, Maryland, Kentucky, Ar- 
kansas, Mississippi, and Louisiana, for the ten years 
ending in 1850, increased respectively in round 
numbers 21, 31, 29, 110, 65, and 61 per cent., 
which he calls " tolerable regularity," and he pur- 
posely leaves out Missouri, Florida, Alabama, 
Georgia, Tennessee, South Carolina, North Carolina, 
and Delaware, which added 83, 6^, 27, 27, 18, 7, 
14, and 19 per cent, to their numbers. Texas^ 
which had been a sovereign state like each one of 
the United States, from the time of the formation 
of the Confederacy of the "United Mexican States," 
in 1824, seceded therefrom in 1836, but did not join 
the Federal- American Union until 1845, and of 
course does not appear in the United States census 
for 1840 ; her white population, however, at that 
period was estimated at about 130,000 ; this shows 
an increase in 1850 of 20 per cent. All these last 
named States, except Delaware and Missouri, are 
classed by Mr. Cairnes as " slave-consuming States f 
and as South Carolina, the " head and front of all 
offending," records an advance of 7 per cent, in the 
whites and 17 per cent, in the blacks, against 21 
and 5 per cent, in Yirginia, it argues that a 
greater number of the white inhabitants of the "Pal- 
metto State" moved to other commonwealths than 
did those of the " Old Dominion," and further shows 



( 51 ) 

that the former State, although " slave-consuming," 
had no importations of negroes, 17 per cent, being 
11 per cent, under the average increase in the entire 
South. Between the years 1847 and 1850, the mi- 
gration from South Carolina and other " slave-con- 
suming States" to California, was very large: until 
1860, the Southerners controlled the political affairs 
of that State, yet they never proposed or entertained 
the idea of amending its constitution, as they had a 
right to do if they had deemed fit, in order to admit 
slavery within its limits ; and with the territories of 
Colorado, Dakotah, Nebraska, Nevada, Utah, Wash- 
ington, Oregon, and New Mexico open to them, 
only 63 slaves have been taken there. It is nonsense 
to be talking about " slave-breeding," and "slave-con- 
suming," States. As well might the same epithets 
be applied to Ireland and England, the one labour 
" breeding " and the other labour " consuming." 
How is it that in Maryland "the slave population ab- 
solutely gains upon the white between the ages of 
five and fifteen ?" Do the blacks come into the world 
as children partially grown, instead of infants ? He 
continues : — "In Arkansas and Mississippi the re- 
lative proportions of the two races up to the age of 
15 years remain almost unchanged, but no sooner 
do we reach the age of 20, than in those States of 
severe plantation labour the slave population ex» 
hibits, in relation to the whites, a large increase. 
[This does not look like " consuming."] Louisiana, 
indeed, in this as in the former example, seems at 

b 2 



( 52 ) 

the first glance to weaken the argument, but in fact 
it strengthens it ; the adult slave population, instead 
of gaining on the white, slightly loses ground." Mr. 
Cairnes will be enlightened when I tell him that 
Arkansas and Mississippi are not sugar-growing 
States, and that they have laws prohibiting the in- 
gress of slaves, except when accompanied by their 
masters ; and that Louisiana, while she has the same 
restrictions, invites a larger white population in 
consequence of her commerce. The census, being 
taken on the 1st of June, includes all the foreigners 
who are domiciled there for business purposes during 
the season. A month later would make a conside- 
rable diminution in the figures. Thus his analysis 
of the white and black population is perfectly worth- 
less. The census of England for 1861 gives a large 
increase in some counties over others, and expe- 
rience teaches us that it is not the invariable habit 
even for white persons to remain in the particular 
localities where they were born. 

Mr. Cairnes should be aware that, according to 
parliamentary usage, any individual of an assembly 
has a right to move the appointment of a committee ; 
and when he speaks of one having been named in 
the South Carolina House of Representatives in 
1857, to report " on the extent of the domestic slave 
trade," and " to consider the expediency of repealing 
the Federal laws against the external traffic," he 
withholds the fact that its report was dismissed, 
which is " fresh evidence " that there were but few 



( 53 ) 

persons holding his opinions in that body, and that 
the people of that State had no notion of rescinding 
their own laws, prohibiting the traffic, which bear 
date anterior to those of the Federal government. 
And as to the Montgomery Convention, composed 
solely of delegates from the slave " consuming " 
States, if they had desired to import labour from 
Africa on account of its alleged cheapness, they 
would neither have adopted a constitution prohi- 
biting such traffic, nor permitted the slave " breed- 
ing" States to "join our Confederacy;" the very 
circumstances of the case and the many proofs on 
record — a professor of jurisprudence should be 
guided by documentary and not hearsay evidence, 
manufactured by the Yankees — establish clearly 
that it is an unblushing falsehood to say that the 
cotton States said to the Border States, " Refuse to 
join us, and we will exclude your slaves, and have 
recourse to Africa." 

It is strange that Mr. Cairnes still argues that 
it will be to the interest of the South to reopen the 
African slave trade. He may be assured that with 
all his perseverance, and politico-economic views, 
he could not get the Confederates to agree with him. 
I had thought that every abolitionist advocated that 
free labour was cheaper than slave labour. It seems, 
however, that I have been in error; but I may be 
excused for entertaining a wrong impression. 

Although I had made it clear that the " condi- 
tions of industrv " were not the same in Cuba and 



( 54 ) 

Louisiana (Mr. Cairnes, in his first letter, said a 
majority of the Southern States, in the second the 
Gulf States), and offered to leave the question to 
the decision of any three political economists, Mr. 
John Stuart Mill excepted, I observe that he again 
asks the question, " Why, if it pays to import negroes 
to raise sugar on the plantations of Cuba, it should 
not pay to import them into Louisiana for precisely 
the same purposes ?" and asserts that I stated "that 
in Cuba the fertile land was all under cultivation." 
I said no such thing. If it were in complete tillage, 
a sufficiency of labour would be indicated, and no 
room would be left for fresh importations. I pro- 
test against being misquoted. Here are my re- 
marks on this subject : — " Cotton is a leading staple 
in Louisiana, and there is none produced in Cuba. 
Land, too, is worth relatively more in comparison 
with the value of negroes in Cuba than it is in the 
South, and hence an additional number of labourers 
beyond the natural increase is found to be profitable 
there. The very reverse is the case in the States. 
While the soil is better for the purpose in those lo- 
calities where sugar is grown than in Cuba, the 
early frosts render that crop very hazardous ; and 
although the value of slaves is somewhat greater, 
their skilled labour more than compensates for the 
difference, owing to the want of knowledge on the 
part of the newly imported Africans. . . . Every 
inch of soil in Cuba is under ownership, and from 
its limited extent full cultivation is highly remune- 



( 55 ) 

rative. Not so in the Confederate States, with their 
vast area of territory ; their inhabitants neither de- 
sire to force the growth of their staples beyond the 
wants of the world, by which they would be injuring 
the value of their present productions ; nor have 
they the capital to engage in such extensive agri- 
cultural enterprises. It is as disadvantageous to 
farm too great a number of acres in a country of 
large geographical proportions, with a sparse popu- 
lation and to extract from the soil more than is 
needed for man, as it would be to work too many 
mines of coal or iron in Great Britain, or to con- 
struct too many ships." 

I may add that the whole system of slavery in 
Cuba is different from that in the Southern States ; 
and that up to the period of American indepen- 
dence, England exhibited more enterprise than the 
Spanish in conducting the African slave trade. So 
much so, that Yirginia, South Carolina, and other 
of her colonies, opposed the traffic, they then having 
a plethora of that kind of labour. The British, 
too, imported as many women as men, while the 
Spanish, from the earliest period, have traded in 
males, and nearly all the Africans smuggled into 
Cuba up to the present day have been of that sex ; 
it, therefore, under such circumstances, "pays" to 
continue their importation. Nor are the negroes 
in Cuba, for this very reason, as well taken care of 
as they are in the South, it being to the interest of 
the masters to get as much work out of them as 



( 56 ) 

possible. As many of these proprietors are absentees 
in New England and Spain, the slaves are left in 
charge of overseers, who care little about their per- 
sonal comfort. Not so in the South, where the 
institution of slavery is conducted in a patriarchal 
manner. " It pays" to import coolies into Cuba, 
also into the British West Indies, yet it would not 
be profitable to carry on that commerce with the 
Confederate States, whose labour, from the natural 
causes above mentioned, keeps pace with the de- 
mand, and must continue to do so always, by reason 
of the start given to it prior to American indepen- 
dence, and aided by the Northerners, when their 
emancipation laws were passed, sending their ne- 
groes South, the census positively proving that nei- 
ther the abolition of slavery in one section, nor the 
extension of it in another, has diminished nor in- 
creased the legitimate ratio of negro population. 
It has also demonstrated that the regular augmenta- 
tion of negro labourers is quite equal to supplying 
any possible demand that may arise for the pro- 
ductions of Southern soil. The crops of the Confe- 
derate States, cotton, rice, naval stores, &c, are 
among the necessaries of life, the call for them is, 
therefore, very regular ; those of Cuba constitute, 
in a great measure, what are classed as luxuries, 
and, with the increasing extravagance among the 
masses, the demand for them is constantly becoming 
greater, while its peculiar climate leaves it without 
a competitor. 



( 57 ) 

Mr. Cairn es is quite astray in his application of 
political science to the productions of the Confede- 
rate States. He says, " A considerable increase in 
the exports of the South to Europe would involve a 
readjustment of what Mr. Mill calls the equation 
of international exchange between the two conti- 
nents." Does he not know that a crop of 3,000,000 
bales of cotton may net more money to the planters 
than 4,000,000 bales, the enhanced price and re- 
duced expenses more than making up the difference? 

The Saturday Review, which Mr. Cairnes quotes, 
states that "slaves are to the planter not material, but 
machinery." This is true ; but what is the use of 
having more machinery than is required to supply 
clothing for the actual wants of mankind ? Have 
not the Lancashire people erected too many mills — 
an additional spinning force of thirty per cent, in 
the last four years ? Surely the consumption of 
British fabrics has not made such strides within 
that time ; and would not many of these millowners 
have been ruined had the American cotton crop of 
1861 come forward in regular course? Affirmative 
answers to these questions will be given by every 
one conversant with such matters. There is no 
doubt but the large crops of 1858, 1859, and 1860 
received the benefit of the fictitious consumption by 
having to feed a superfluous number of looms. The 
leading article of commerce, however, would be 
quoted this day at a lower price than for many years 
had not the war intervened ; as it is, the limited 



( 58 ) 

crop of 1862 and great waste, will no doubt cause 
what may come forward to net treble the ordinary 
result. A cotton-spinner is disadvantaged by too 
much machinery being erected in the kingdom ; so 
is a miner by the opening of too many new mineral 
veins; the same rule applies to the planters, who 
have already a sufficiency of" machinery" for their 
purposes. Mr. Cairnes seems to think that the first 
cost is every thing ; he takes no account of the an- 
nual expense, interest, or the wear and tear. Hear 
his theory in reference to this : — " It seems then 
that the interest of producers, as regards materials 
and machinery, is not the same ; while it is their 
gain that materials should be cheap, it is their gain 
that machinery should be dear." It is not the cost 
of the machinery, it is the quantity, the competi- 
tion, that lowers prices. I advise Mr. Cairnes to con- 
sult " the first manufacturer he happens to meet." 
Such truths as I have stated " may be new to poli- 
tical economists," but not at all novel to intelligent 
planters, merchants, and manufacturers, who are 
presumed to understand their own business. 

He alludes to a parable contained in the 24th 
chapter of the Book of Numbers, which the reader 
will have observed applies altogether to himself, and 
not to me. As he has chosen to quote Scripture for 
my benefit, I hope he will allow me to reciprocate by 
referring him to the 20th chapter of Exodus, 16th 
verse. He has been very reckless in slandering the 
people of the Confederate States, and, by his man- 



( 59 ) 

ner of writing, appears greatly irritated at having 
the incorrectness of his statements exposed. 

I have to thank you, the editor of the leading 
journal in Europe in opposition to the cause of my 
country and the sentiments entertained by my com- 
patriots, for the large amount of space that has been 
accorded me ; and am, &c. 

George M'Henry. 

December 19 ; 1862. 



TO THE EDITOR OF THE DAILY NEWS, 

Sir, — I find I was not mistaken in my conjec- 
ture that the candour of the Southern advocate in 
the Saturday Review would discompose the serenity 
of his client. To concede that "there are slave- 
breeders in Yirginia ;" that "the practice of breed- 
ing slaves for sale — or, at least, of regularly selling 
off the increase among them — does exist in Yir- 
ginia, and perhaps in North Carolina ;" that " the 
natural increase of the population — about 10,000 
per annum — passes into the more Southern States f 
— this line of defence does not, it seems, satisfy the 
ideas of Mr. M'Henry as to what is required in an 
advocate of the South. He has accordingly once 
again taken the ease out of the hands of his counsel, 
and now endeavours to divert attention from the 
damaging character of these admissions by turning 
upon me a torrent of offensive verbiage, which 



( 60 ) 

would really with more justice have been directed 
against his own too candid ally. 

The tone of Mr. M' Henry's last communication, 
in which the charge of " reckless slander" alternates 
with that of " unblushing falsehood," might well, I 
think, excuse me from pursuing this controversy 
further ; but, when I entered the lists with a member 
of the Southern chivalry, I had not the simplicity 
to suppose that I should be indulged with those 
amenities of debate which are usual in civilized 
countries , and, in now withdrawing from the dis- 
cussion, I do so, not because Mr. M'Henry has 
begun to be rude, but because he has ceased to be 
intelligible. What is to be done with a reasoner 
who, when I refer him, in proof of the existence of 
an internal slave trade in the South, to the fact, 
that a special committee of the South Carolina 
legislature was appointed to report on the trade — 
and that this committee sent in a report, in which 
a formal estimate was given of its extent, coupled 
with a recommendation that the foreign slave trade 
should be reopened — meets this statement by the 
observation that I " withhold the fact that its report 
was dismissed ?" Or who, to give another instance, 
quotes the words in which I state the reductio ad 
absurdum of my opponent's principles, as my 
" theory ?" When matters reach this pass, argument 
of necessity ceases. 

Before taking leave of the controversy, there is 
one point to which I will refer. In a former letter 



( 61 ) 

I declined to engage in a discussion as to the ex- 
istence of an agitation in the South for reopening 
the African slave trade, on the ground that the 
fact had already been established in your leading 
columns by the conclusive evidenee of the speeches 
and writings of the prominent politicians who had 
taken part in it ; and I added — " Let Mr. M'Henry 
show, either that the extracts which you quoted 
were forged, or that they do not establish the con- 
clusion which they were adduced to support, and it 
will then be time enough to bring forward fresh 
evidence. Of this, he may depend upon it, there is 
abundance, which will not fail to be forthcoming 
when the need for it arises." Mr. M'Henry now 
asks, " Why is this evidence not forthcoming ?" I 
beg to tell him it is because the need for it has not 
arisen. When he satisfies either of the above con- 
ditions I shall be prepared to bring forward the 
evidence of which I spoke ; but, meantime, I am not 
disposed to be led away from the real point of the 
argument with which I undertook to deal, on the 
trail of every false or useless issue which it may 
suit Mr. M'Henry to raise. 

I am, &c., 

J. E. Cairnes. 

74, Lower Mount-street, Dublin, Dec. 27, 1862. 



THE END. 



\0 



